I was trying to get to my account on World Community Grid, and it says "unavailable, stats being updated, this will be finished in 32 minutes". How on earth can something as simple as stats take 32 minutes on anything but a 486?

Presumably, it is not just your stats being updated but everyone's. The script that updates the stats over at CPDN takes several hours to run but it doesn't stop access to your account while doing so. I suspect that this is actually something to do with the ongoing problems at WCG and something has auto-generated a less than totally accurate message.