I believe that the capitalization rule comes into effect when a new 'sentence' is started after the colon. In the case of a list, it's not necessary.

So, you could say "He saw several things on the shelves: cookies, jam, bread, and soda." and since the continuation after the colon isn't a new idea per-se, it isn't capitalized.

However, in the example you cited, there is almost a new sentence. Lets replace the colon with a period for sake of argument. "The blue sky was beautiful. The sky resembled..." As you can see, it can be two seperate sentences, the colon is just more gramatically correct in this situation, and that's (I believe) why it is capitalized.

It sounds pretty bad to me.

I think the way you wrote it is just fine.

In linguistics, we refer to words such as this as "blends". One of the good examples is "hoick", as in "to hoick up one's pants. It's supposedly a blend of "hoist" and "hike".

It's used as the past tense of "said" in some dialects of English during the course of a narrative.

Yes, "irregardless" is based on analogy with words like "respective ~ irrespective". "Analogy" is actually the technical term in linguistics for this phenomenon. Another example is "dove" as the past tense for "dive" (it's actually "dived", but not too many people say that anymore), coming from an analogy with "drive ~ drove".

Yeah, definitely after.

"on page 10" sounds best to me.

I would say "Lux's" as well.

This one has always been interesting to me. Before the TV show South Park openly critisized Kyle (one of the 4 main characters) for being Jewish, I was completely unaware that the word could be used as a derogatory noun. Even before it became used in this way people often used the word "jew" as an offensive transitive verb, as in "to jew down the price" which, I believe, originated with the idea that Jewish people are often frugal.

The word is not inherently defematory, but when used with a certain tone of voice or in the right context it can considered offensive. I find this usage of the word inane and ignorant.

I do agree with Joachim though; a likely possibility is that being Jewish has been considered shameful for hundreds of years (although recently it has become more acceptable.)