$63,000,000,000 in sales of licensed merchandise - a little over 20% of all licensed products - is astounding.
And it shows the power the mouse has over everything.
Friday, August 1, 2025
Brilliant teenage students develop mind-blowing inventions to solve global crisis: 'I got goosebumps'
It's always great to see our youth tackling problems that face us all. Fun, human interest stories that offer hope and tackle challenges are always worthwhile.
Over three weeks, students formed teams and tackled pressing issues like carbon emissions, microplastics, e-waste, and heatwaves. The teams then turned their ideas into working prototypes under the mentorship of scientists, professors, and entrepreneurs at the institute.
Hubble Space Telescope spots rogue planet with a little help from Einstein: 'It was a lucky break'
The Hubble Space Telescope detected an anomaly. But it was a scientist who figure it out; Einstein had correctly posited that a planet would create a sort of ripple in its wake. And that's what they saw that encouraged them to study the space further.
A rogue planet! How very unusual.
Man awarded $12,500 after Google Street View camera captured him naked in his yard in Argentina
I know people who would have taken less. Still an amusing story. His nekkid butt was there for all to see...
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Disney doing some good in nature
Disney's Sea Turtle Conservation Inspires the Next Generation
This is a cool story about how Disney is using sea turtle nesting into a means to study these amazing creatures, and inspire the youth by seeing conservation in action. And in a fun way, no less.
Daylight savings time
In the book I read about Benjamin Franklin, there was a snippet about how he became fascinated by a candle that didn't produce smoke.
It stoked his imagination, and being a thinker and a scientist, he considered how important candles were to life. Once it got to be dark, you had to light one. And of the course of an evening, a week, a month, or a year, he ran through many candles.
And so he wrote a short piece about how if there was more daylight, then the need for candles would be reduced. He did a little math and determined that Parisians could save millions of French Livre every year if they had an hour of extra daylight, and didn't have to buy candles.
That was pure Franklin magic. He was good at dissecting a topic and giving a point of view that was well reasoned and proffered an idea. He was quite good at that. And that's why "Doctor Franklin" was si beloved.
The story itself went mostly unnoticed.
That is until 1916, when the Great War started, and Europe was looking for ways to focus attention and cut some costs. And so they turned to Franklins work, and twisted a little. It would be good for their war effort... and thus began a path of daylight savings time. Savings more or less being about saving money on candles, and oil in the evenings.
Monday, July 28, 2025
Disney World to re-open the magic of Disney animation... sort of
When the Disney/MGM studios opened back in 1989, it was all about the behind the scenes magic of movie making.
Among the many interactive exhibits was a look into Disney's animation process. There was a short film featuring Robin Williams and Walter Cronkite, and a gallery where you could watch people animating Disney cartoons in a very "old school" sort of way. Artists sat at desks and hand drew the images, and then they were painted.
Two things happened that led to the closure of this area: more artists were hired in far off lands, and technology started to creep into the animation process. For a time, Disney kept this area open a memento to a bygone era, and they allowed young artists to try their hand at simple drawings.
Then, Disney bought out Star Wars, and decided to reimagine the space into the "launch bay" to introduce the franchise to what had become Disney's Hollywood Studios.
And today, Disney announced that the launch bay would be going away and an old - new attraction would be brought back into the space. Yep, they are bringing back some kind of animation studio experience to the space. I have no doubt it will be cute, but given how the art of animation devolved, and how lackluster the launch bay was, and how animation is all created on computer this will probably be a bit of a nothing.
But we'll have to wait until 2026 to reach that pinnacle of disappointment.
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