Now scientists think they know where it goes.

Twitter, mostly.

As a resident of Britain, I feel like we're pretty on track for V for Vendetta, actually.

Rob Schneider peaked literally last century with Deuce Bigalow. As if that were not bad enough...

They better not remove "I am fond of pigs".

Why can’t anyone study to become a qualified surgeon? Why can’t anyone study to do whatever it is they wanted to do?

What exactly is your point here? That medicine degrees are inaccessible? (Sounds like an America problem.) Or that requiring a medicine degree is a capitalist conspiracy because surgery can be learnt on the job?

Why would we need a specific word to describe that gap in the first place?

In principle, anyone who wants to can study to be a surgeon. It's just that most of them will fail, be it at the first hurdle of qualifying for a medicine degree course, the next hurdle of actually passing the course, or any of the subsequent hurdles in training. By contrast, pretty much any able-bodied person who sets out to learn how to flip burgers will have succeeded, by and large, within a few days.

Once the tradespeople are done, they're done. But the inhabitants will be struggling to arrange their furniture indefinitely.

Yes, that is one of the things quoted in the wikipedia article. You'll notice that there's some other stuff that comes after it.