I met Percy Diaconis once - he is very nice. I was just new in the area of algebraic combinatorics, and he has some previous works that I was generalizing.

I have coded a lot in Java, some in C/C++, Javascript, Python, PHP, etc, and I must say that Mathematica is for sure my preferred language for prototyping and testing out things. (I do research in discrete mathematics). Say what you want about Stephen Wolfram (I agree he has a lot of controversial views), but Mathematica is extremely well-designed. All functions are named very carefully, so one does not have to guess. A lot of the stuff is indeed in the default namespace, but since the names are indeed long and descriptive, this is not an issue. Another thing which is nice, is the built-in documentation, which is incomparable with any other language. Every single function has lots of examples, which is a great feature when learning a new language. Mathematica is just very consistent - this is a requirement if every single function should be in the default namespace. Another consequence is that all functions, objects etc. must be compatible with everything else. It is very easy for libraries/frameworks to force the mindset of the creator onto the user, and the philosophy might disagree with the general idea of the language. Having the 'everything is public' mindset, really does help keeping things consistent. I suggest actually looking at some Mathematica code and read a bit about the main ideas, and disregard the personal opinions of its creator.

Why not let the water evaporate/boil? The titrium is just heavier hydrogen atoms, bound to oxygen, forming water. So, by letting the water evaporate (by leaving it exposed to air, or simply boiling it) the (radioactive) water vapor will quickly be spread out over a huge area. Moreover, no fish or wildlife will be exposed to larger amounts, as the vapor would form clouds with lots of other water, and disperse. Letting the water out in the ocean directly, would initially give larger concentrations at the outlet, where the potential exposure can be more severe, and it would take longer time for the titrium to disperse in the ocean water. The vaporization solution would make the dispersion much quicker.

Well, 2737631357921793461914298938174501291 is the product of 1238179781035456451 and 2211012810782926841, and it took like 2 seconds to factor on my laptop....

I use it daily. I feel that the style is extremely consistent, with excellent documentation. Perfect for prototyping.

A year is not unheard of at all. I would say most of my papers take 8-14 months to get from submitted to published (I do math research professionally). The paper is well-written, and it would be a great reference to include in calculus classes. Notation is indeed much more important than we think - choosing the right notation to express thoughts can really simplify problems.

Whenever I find something useful in my research, I try to add it (and reference) to wikipedia. I sort of use it as a "personal" notebook.

I am now looking forward to a hobbit/starwars crossover!

Actually... i think you will like this: http://stackoverflow.com/quest...

"Multiple times more dense than the sun" is the understatement of the year. The sun in average is about 1.5 the density of water, perhaps like maple syrup. A neutron star has average density which is far denser than the densest material on Earth, about 3.7×10e17 kg/m3. A neutron star is therefore 100000000000000 times denser than the sun. It is a tad more than "multiple times".

Stonekeep - Excellent dungeon crawler. The graphics is still the best game graphics I have ever seen, the music and feeling is superb, and the story is great.

This question has been asked, and answerred positively, see http://stackoverflow.com/quest...

Actually, no. Almost all numbers that are defined, are defined in a manner that describes an algorithm on how to construct them. Hence, they are computable. You need to brush up your theory on computable real numbers. It is all about the definitions...

Yes, it is hard to solve TSP on a classical computer, but NP-complete problems can be solved efficiently on a quatum computer...

Might it be that all this pseudoscience are things not taught in school? I mean, there is no decent sex education, so, most people need to discover all the nice imortant bits all by themselves. Maybe this translates to a broader acceptance of pseudoscience; if schools cannot be trusted to teach a wonderful thing like sex, how can it be trusted to teach anything? Hence, the suspicion about science, and acceptance of pseudoscience?