The purpose of calc-mode-var-list seems to be to allow users to
access and change variable settings easily; the variables in the list 
are actually bound by a mapcar.  I think this was got rid of because
it didn't give docstrings to the variables.
The following patches put calc-mode-var-list back in, and also adds
docstrings to the variables when they are bound.
The list is used by a couple of functions in calc.el and
calc-embed.el, so because the list has been changed to include
docstrings, some minor changes are needed in those functions.
So included are patches for calc.el and calc-embed.el.

(Completely unrelated, but calc-mode compares the calc-settings file
to ".emacs" to make sure it doesn't get loaded twice.  The problem is
that it only checks to see if the calc settings file contains the
string ".emacs", so if it is "~/.emacs.d/calc", for example, it
doesn't get loaded.  Miles Bader suggested changing the check to see
if the calc-settings file is actually the user-init-file instead of
seeing if it contains ".emacs".  The third patch does that.)

Jay