Thanks for the response, Ian. I ended up finishing the project for which I asked this question, so I haven’t tried yet. I never bothered experimenting with manually manipulating the $_wp_theme_features array. However, I think your approach makes more sense.
I found this update to t310s recommendation which is working for me on 2.8.6:
<?php query_posts($query_string . '&showposts=10'); ?>
That will show 10 results per page without showing ALL posts.
