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HTML and XML in general are horrible too if you're writing anything remotely complex by hand. But we use these kinds of formats because they are expressively powerful, unambiguous to a parser, and amenable to various kinds of analysis and transformations.

If you want to write docs yourself, rather than writing everything in HTML/XML + CSS it makes sense to write in another syntax and convert it, especially if you're doing regular everyday things; this is what Markdown, wiki syntax, etc are about. Similarly, you wouldn't write MathML by hand in most cases; you can use a simple syntax like AsciiMathML or some non-Turing-complete subset of (La)TeX for writing most regular everyday stuff and convert it.

Tiddlymath is Tiddlywiki with a plugin for MathML. Tiddlywiki is frankly my favorite format for redistributable text documents - non-proprietary, editable in Firefox, extensible, with all the advantages of wiki-formatting and cross-referencing.

Pug

http://math.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciencepad/asciencepad.html

It's TiddlyWiki, a self-contained-self-editing-in-one-HTML-file wiki, and this particular flavor includes a WYSIWYG formula editor.

Works great in Firefox. Works in IE. Supposedly works in Safari. I haven't been able to get it to work in Chrome (can read, but cannot write)

http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/asciimath.html

Just today I found this cool tool that converts easy to type ascii notation for formulas ("simplied TeX") to mathml using javascript. And there are also visual tools to help.
There is a special page to make it easier to use in email: http://math.chapman.edu/email/

I have a hard time understanding why I hear so many people complaining about JS as a language. I think a lot of Java programmers don't like it because it's not Java (not strongly typed, ...), and a lot of C++ programmers don't like it because it's not C++.

The truth is that you can do some pretty amazing stuff with JavaScript. My favorite demo is here. It's a web-based calculator, and if your browser has MathML set up correctly, it'll display your equation on the fly, as you type it, in standard math notation. For instance, if you type 1/(2+pi), it displays a fraction bar, with 1 on top, and 2+pi on the bottom (pi rendered as a Greek letter). (I think recent versions of Firefox have MathML and its fonts set up correctly by default, but if not, you can download the necessary fonts (instructions). For IE, you need to install MathPlayer.) What I think this calculator app demonstrates pretty dramatically is how powerful a development platform the web browser can be, without messing with the ugliness of AJAX at all. WYSIWYG mathematics typesetting is the kind of application that people used to pay $100 for ca. 1995, and now it's not only free, it's open-source, and it's an app that you can just run in your browser, without having to install anything.

See ASCIIsvg that allows for easy creation of mathematical graphics.

Peter Jipsen's ASCIIsvg script (JavaScript) is an easy and quite powerful way to generate mathematical SVG graphics in HTML.

The resemblance with Muglia is strong (but Farley doesn't look like he is looking for a fight):

Muglia's mugshot

Chris Farley

The premise is that on one had they can build spacecraft cheap (relatively), and have much or most of them not work. Or spend vast amounts of money checking and rechecking everything, and desining in tons of reliability, then they'd still only reach the reliability of the launch vehicle itself, so they'd still lose 1 in 20 or so.

Their studies had concluded that to get the most amount of science done for a given amount of money spent, they should expect to lose about 1 in 5 spacecraft. Pretty close to what has actually happened.

Iridium satellites are easily visible to the naked eye when they reflect the sun. Did this help Iridium? No. Astronomers even bitch about light pollution.

Star life summary.
Summary of massive star/supernova reactions.