It seems to have been born in some deranged xml-lovers wet dream in which ... structure is kept separate from presentation

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I added a new element type for typographical examples for my book on LaTeX, and it only took a few minutes

Wait a second... you're writing a book on LaTeX using DocBook?

Does not compute...

Shouldn't you be using LaTeX to write a book on LaTeX?

4. I 'hire' (read: give the honor of doing my research) master's students to run my experiments / write code.
5. I 'hire' (read: give the honor of doing my research) phd students to draw conclusions on those experiments

Whenever I helped my professor with his research, I always shared co-author credit on his publications, hence no plagiarism. I would imagine this is standard practice throughout the world.

"with it's clueless and campy marketing style" --> " with its clueless and campy marketing style"

Mr. Montalban was probably the most significant Latino in Star Trek.

I assume you're referring to the characters, not the actors, since you cite Chekov as a Russian. Khan was not Latino; he was a Sikh from northern India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh