Micah, the Elliot article is excellent and the Wiki article is generally fine(few quibbles we don't need to get in to). They among other things make the point that there aren't any "RMS" watts, and that RMS is properly applied to voltage and current.

As was said, a watt is a fixed quantity, the standard technical definition being that it's the power resulting from 1 joule of energy being applied for 1 second(that answers everything, doesn't it?). A couple hundred years ago James Watt was comparing the power of his steam engines with rival horses(never had anything to do with electricity), but now his name lives forever in electronics. One fact is that about 746 watts equal 1 horsepower. Now this might not seem to be the most useful piece of information, but if you run into an obnoxious audiophile who's bragging about his new 500 watt amp, after telling him what he can do with his 500 watts(he'll only need 1 most of the time)you can point out that it's only about 2/3rds of a horsepower(weak!).

By the way, did you happen to satisfy yourself about the relatively small effect of a 3dB sound level increase, as was suggested here a couple weeks ago when you questioned it?

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Enjoy the music, not the equipment.