Yes, it's a specifically American phenomenon, because they're all stupid. I've never heard a Brit call their vacuum a Hoover, or refer to 'hoovering' or an announcement on the Tannoy. Not that I'm assuming you're British. Just providing examples. And maybe your arrogance is well-deserved in that you're more vigilant than most and always say 'vacuum flask' instead of 'thermos'.

On the other hand, I've been playing a few of my favorite titles from the PS and PS2 era and all of the loading makes me crazy. Silent Hill is load screens up and down every hallway. Ico: moving through every door, window, and hole entails a loading screen. FFXII: a product very late in the PS2 dev cycle, and walking through the first city is a chore. Persona games entail plenty of loading. Mass Effect and its infamous elevators might be partly down to clumsy design, but it's also a limit of storage space and processing power. We've got open world sandbox games like Crackdown or GTA, but picture something with the polish and intensity of Mass Effect running on the next platform with an 'open-galaxy' world. I agree that I don't care how high def individual textures are, but the opportunity for increased breadth and granularity is very enticing.

As always, we have to consider whether people whose bodies naturally guide them to nine hours or more of sleep per night have an underlying physiology that makes them more likely to develop Parkinson's. For example's sake, when my schedule is uninterrupted and I can sleep for as long or short as I want, that is, go to sleep when tired and wake up naturally, I average about eight and a half to nine hours. Alarm clocks and the modern world keep me sleeping about seven hours a night. Am I mitigating the potentially harmful effects of sleeping so much by keeping my body on an unnatural rhythm, or are the underlying risk factors still present? Biology is not my forte. The stuff about night shift work and hormones is interesting. Higher levels of melatonin and oestradiol = increased risk. The article doesn't mention, however, if night shift workers take night shifts because they're naturally "night owls" (meaning they would have some biological factors regulating their risk of developing the disease) or if their schedule is out of their hands (that is, we can impose external schedules on sleep biology to manage risk factors). There are all sorts of risk factors that can be managed with proper diet/exercise/etc, I guess it's not too much of a stretch to assume that sleep management would have similar benefits.

I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't speak to this incarnation's characterization but in "The Naked Time" Sulu runs around with a fencing foil, if I recall correctly. It's probably a reference to that, not Picard, though it was probably also an excuse for a cheesy sword fight.