"instigator Mark Tobias"
Why would you send your children to someone like this? Does he razz them for a week or two, just to see if he can start something?
As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with NASA. It looks like a ploy to get better search rankings for firetree.net.
something something slashdot editors something.
We're here at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, where we've secretly replaced the fine vaccines they usually serve with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!
If addition is faster than subtraction, just add the negative value.
Next thing you know we'll have CSIgrep. (enhance enhance enhance grep)
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.