>"The statement that mathematicians uniformly say it is 1 is simply false" Not really. No serious mathematician would dispute the fact that for every real x,

>"The statement that mathematicians uniformly say it is 1 is simply false" Not really. No serious mathematician would dispute the fact that for every real x, e^x=sum(n=0 to infinity)x^n/n!. But the above fails at x=0 if we don't define 0^0=1. So even mathematicians who claim to not use 0^0=1, can almost always be convinced to admit that they do indeed use 0^0=1, using the Taylor series for e^x.