> so animations don't have to be tied to this absurd 1994-era DOM for the next decade or longer.

You haven't been paying attention to Adobe's latest moves with Flash.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/flash-platform-in-action/console-q...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37678/Epic_Games_Unreal_E...

And what's more, check out their W3C proposal for CSS Shaders, a feature which they are partners in with Apple:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/html5/articles/css-shaders.html