What I hadn’t heard before was the part about stationary cells being reported to be more stress tolerant.
I haven’t had a chance to read the article cited at the end of that sentence, but here’s the link. I have no idea if it’s interesting or presents anything that you haven’t already mentioned. My guess is that you’ve probably read it before.
For what it’s worth, I believe the Mr. Malty calculator uses the fairly standard rate of .75 million cells per milliliter of wort per degree Plato (and twice that for lagers).
I’m not saying that’s the be all and end all of pitching rates or that it isn’t worth experimenting with different rates for different styles of beer, but it’s not like Jamil just arbitrarily made it up.