U.S. law used to require "copyright formalities" of this sort (more or less - the details are a little complicated), up until it "implemented" the Berne Convention in 1989. Even though that was over 25 years ago, memories of this obviously still persist.

Nonsense. Business emails are often coming up with some nonsensical strategy, or attempting to paper over its failure. They can get very creative.

Wait, longer movies? Have you sat through any major film lately? Poor Bilbo Baggins already suffered through 8 or 9 hours of Peter Jackson, and you want to send him back for more?

Yuen-Ren Chao was not protesting against pinyin (which didn't yet exist) or any other romanization scheme when he wrote the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den. In fact, he was a key proponent of "National Romanization" (Guoyu Luomazi), one of pinyin's precurors.

He mostly intended it as a linguistic joke - if you've ever read any of his works, he can be quite amusing - and as a demonstration of how Chinese has changed over the millenia. In ancient Chinese, the poem would be more or less comprehensible (although still a little odd here and there), but in modern Mandarin, so many sounds have converged together, that it just sounds like gibberish.

I don't know if incontinence here was a Freudian slip or not, but it sure was an accurate one.

There's actually been serious study of this, and it really is tied to potential for weight gain/loss. Here's one recent summary: Energy-balance studies reveal associations between gut microbes, caloric load, and nutrient absorption in humans.

The news business nowadays is such a gravy train, who wouldn't want to get in on it?

Windows Phone has 6% market share in Germany, the iPhone around 12-15%. Though both have been dropping of late.

Do you work at Microsoft Deutschland, by any chance?

No wonder the last quarter-pounder I had tasted a little odd.

Odder than usual, I mean.

If congressmen are using it, doesn't that only strengthen the argument that "TOR is a paedophile/terrorist tool"?

The 1 child law is being eased somewhat, but still, with unmarried parents, there would have been very strong pressure to get an abortion. Which is why I'm a bit skeptical about the story myself.

I watched the Chinese news broadcast, but, while it did feature prison interviews with both supposed parents, didn't really have a lot of details. Of course, there probably wouldn't be too many details given even if the story were true. Still, I found it less than convincing.

Uh-oh. So when they try to ship the stuff to the U.S., this might happen.

Fish discover fire!

Admittedly, they face a few more logistical problems than bears ever did.

I don't think Pixar actually used the name "RenderMan" until the late '80's, but they do count their earlier work as part of it now (http://renderman.pixar.com/view/brief-introduction-to-renderman).

Along those same lines, it should be noted that the paperback edition of "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon" will not be out until October 7, 2014, so it's not too surprising it was shown as "unavailable." Actually, if you go to Amazon right now, it does list the paperback edition (http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0593070461/) as available, but it looks like it's only from third-party sellers, who may have mixed up their hardcover and paperback listings. The hardcover edition is available from Amazon, and at a cheaper price than, say, Barnes and Noble.