If a programmer considers bitwise operations a 'dark corner' then one should question that programmers core competency.

Yes, the article is more confusing than enlightening (about.com is probably not a 'goto' source of concise information) and does exemplify this current trend of going back to technologies such as VBScript and adopting all the bad things (Bad Things™) from that language.

That is, you have to run the code to see what it does.

(As a side note, while looking for the Character Map, I stumbled upon the Math Input Panel - OMGLOLWUT?! - can someone explain the existence of such a thing? Is it really that valuable on a tablet PC?)