Kubuntu is not a sinking ship, it needs community leadership to take over, I fully expect to be able to do that but of course it'll take a few weeks to sort out, longer than it takes to make a grumpy reference in a Slashdot summary article.

You probably don't know but I have a disability which requires me to me wear an eye patch currently so any sort of pirate reference is in shockingly bad taste :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jriddell/6868957819

"I want access to the awesome Ubuntu package repositories, as well as all the PPAs."

I hope and expect the Kubuntu community will continue to provide up to date packages fast

"(for instance: you need to click the tabs in the launcher menu instead of just mousing over them, which is unpleasant)"

we have a policy of having everything go upstream unless there is very good reason. I just checked and the issue you say is not true (now).

"Is there any reason to use Kubuntu instead of just about any other KDE based distro?"

We believe KDE to be the best technology and therefore way to take over the world. Other distros will fill in gaps in KDE's offering with non-KDE apps but we are much more reluctant to do that. If you are interested in having short term solutions go with other distros which ship non-KDE web browsers etc.

For an excellent overview of this story I recommend this critique of the paper from the English NHS's excellent Behind the Headlines service. Unlike a newspaper it will tell you who did the study, how it was funded, where the data came from and whether the results are worth anything. In this case the data was severaly limited and had put people into either "eating sweets every day" or "not eating sweets" which is very coarse categorising.It also doesn't report the absolute number of children who went on to become adult offenders. In conclusion

"Overall, this study on its own does not provide strong enough evidence to guide childhood dietary advice, although common sense says that eating too many sweets is probably not good for children. Before the newspapersâ(TM) explanation for a link can be believed there must be studies specifically designed to investigate the issue from the outset."