This looks like a pretty usable free alternative to Mathematica, especially now that Wolfram Alpha seems to be shortening calculation timeouts on their free version.
http://sagemath.org/

Really, though, scroll pumps ARE nifty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll_compressor

Interesting spam:
"Dear Dr.L Martin,

I am pleased to recommend the latest issue of /*Journal of Modern Physics *
/(JMP, March,2012, Volume 3, Issue 3) to you, these articles can be freely
downloaded from the following link: <LINK>. You are welcome to
download them for your research and feel free to circulate them to your colleagues."

Nice job promoting me there, but that happens occasionally.

The website looks like a real journal, but some of the articles they highlight in the e-mail are:

# Mathematical Modeling for Quantum Electron Wave Therapy


# Stability of Atoms, Causality in Elementary Processes and the mystery of
Interference and Hyroscope


# Analysis of the Spectral Line Emissions of the Hydrogen Atom with Paraquantum Logic
Some of the articles manage to at least keep the nonsense babble out of the title, but I don't have high hopes for the content. (The top google hits for the phrases "Hyroscope" and "Paraquantum logic" are this journal and blogspot sites.)

Any bright ideas what to do with most of the flesh of entire coconut?

Time to face the mutants.

Everyone to Shoppers now! Don't miss this deal!

Found an old HP pocket calculator in a drawer at work. Missing the battery, but with a DC power supply.
The power connection had ripped off, so I resoldered it. Turns out it still works perfectly.
There is no model number on the case, and a little research shows that is because at that time HP wasn't sure pocket calculators would catch on, it's their first model.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm
It has a beautiful red LED display and uses four register reverse-Polish notation. And when you give it something complicated like a trigonometric function it takes almost a second to give you the answer.
Still, apparently it had better precision than most contemporary mainframe computers.

And now for something completely different...

Snippets overheard from the neighbouring table at lunch today:
.... brain emits a field you can measure a few inches outside the skull, but the hearts field is much stronger ...... that coherence of the heart ....... is it a wave or a particle ....... feel genuine compassion ...... incoherent fields ...... we have a CD people buy from us .....

Sad to say I didn't come up with something to say. Would have been interesting to see his reaction had he found out there were 6 physicists at the next table, though.

I'm pretty certain the online-application server of immigrations Canada is on 28.8 dialup in someone's basement.

Strangely enough, even if you give Mario a Portal gun, I'm still terrible at it.

may be getting drunk, but I'll be damned if I don't eat at least some of the strawberries I bought.