Currently he appears to be abducting and killing teenagers.

It isn't, but many of the modules are written in C or other thread-capable languages. For instance, if you are using sk-learn to analyze a dataset with a machine-learning algorithm, your Python code will run on a single processor but the calls to sk-learn to do your heavy lifting will distribute across cores.

R is definitely still ahead for data modeling, but Python has some advantages too. With a bigger set of modules (libraries) to choose from and high popularity in the financial sector, there are big improvements all the time. For the purposes of this discussion, the most important Python modules are:
IPython: powerful interactive shell
numpy and scipy: numerical, matrix, and scientific functions (matlab-ish)
pandas: R-like data structures and data analysis tools (analysis mostly limited to regression)
statsmodels: statistical analysis, complements pandas
sk-learn: machine learning

So can Python do everything that R can? No. Or, at least, not as easily. But it is improving in that direction quite quickly, and if Python's data analysis capability meets your needs, then you can likely do everything in one language instead of calling R routines from another.

Python and R are sort-of converging via Pandas. I'm partial to Python, but Pandas really starts to blur the lines conceptually.

That whole site is part of a gigantic, long-term cleanup - partially motivated by the desire not to let radioactive waste reach the Columbia River.

I've been witness to numerous "negative miracles", where the divine hand of our Lord decides to inflict his wrath upon some unworthy subject. It often does result in a "God Damnit!", so your hypothesis seems reasonable.

Yes, and they do exactly that for Mac so they really have no excuse except pure arrogance. "Alienate your customers" can only direct a company in a monopoly position.

Yes, I envy those people - but the reality is that I have a family with young kids and cannot just go and forget it all like that. I have to make due with "be back by dinner".

"Practical need" is a pretty low bar for dismissing something awesome. I'd have a hard time justifying most of my possessions based on "practical need".

Every day, I see scads of men with earrings, necklaces, cuff links, ties, money clips, fancy shoes, fancy suits, etc. You can try to argue that men don't care about bling, but that is ridiculous. Watches as jewelry is no different than buying a nice shirt instead of something from Target, or even choosing the $20 Target shirt instead of the $15 one on the next rack. For those "mans man" people you seem to have in mind, go check out their pickup truck or gun.

Yeah, it's much easier to put down your rod and make your way over to the cockpit to check the time.

In an office environment, sure, a wristwatch is superfluous. Doing anything even remotely active, you don't necessarily have your cell phone in a handy spot: jogging, biking, swimming, sailing, fishing, etc. You also can snag a quick look at your watch without getting caught - much harder to do with a smartphone, and much less socially awkward. Smart phones sometimes die - I don't always get a full day out of my battery, but a watch will run essentially forever. Smart phones aren't very durable, even with protective cases - so if you are doing something where the smart phone might get wet or subject to impact, it isn't really an option. Smart phones also aren't very pretty. You can deck them out with fancy cases, but at the end of the day a shiny piece of functional jewelry is still nicer aesthetically. People would probably wear something on their wrist even without the time-telling feature - that is sort of a bonus.

To tell the time?

Like I said, I can't speculate on what happens to the microscopic bits, just that the bottles don't remain bottles after a relatively short time in the sun. Back in the old days, we'd find just the black bases of the old 2-liter bottles that were made of two kinds of plastic. You'd almost never find the clear parts. I think this strongly implies that the clear part (PET plastic) does not hold up well in the sun and salt water, or there was some other condition that happened to wash the black bits up in my back yard but not the clear bits.

Well, I actually agree with some of the moving around that they did - for instance, centralizing and arranging the name manager in Excel is a big improvement. But they could have done that in the menus as well.