I find the story of Andy Mooney and the Disney Princess franchise interesting.

This New York Times article speaks to his inspiration:

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first “Disney on Ice” show. “Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. “They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

And Wikipedia summarizes the financial aspect nicely:

Despite limited advertising and no focus groups, the various Disney Princess items released became a huge success. Sales at Disney Consumer Products rose from $300 million in 2001 to $3 billion in 2006.

That’s an order of magnitude in just five years. Astounding!

This Wired article has a collection of a few of them, and they’re rather interesting.

Via Kottke.

Remembering that with the 7% discount given with purchases of more than $10 and the limit of only being able to make purchases in $.05 increments, a $39.95 purchase gives a $2.80 bonus so you’ll be able to get exactly 19 rides at the regular fare rate of $2.25 per ride from the $42.75 you’ll end up with on the card, leaving no money left over at the end.

There’s also other numbers that work: $35.75 gives 17, $37.75 gives 18, $73.60 gives 35, $75.70 gives 36, and $77.80 gives 37 rides; but I think $39.95 will be the easiest to remember.

And because Random House has it listed on Gay Talese’s website’s essays page, the PDF of the article is available for download. Read that; then watch this:

Amazing.

See Seven Second Summits for details.

Justin Verlander did not get his 25th win for the season, but watching this suicide squeeze that turned out to be the winning run was really cool.

Here’s a photo I took; that’s Willie Randolph in the third base coach’s box. Oh, and that hot dog vendor in the lower right seems like he has a lot of fun with his job.

Edit: (10/3/2011) That hot dog vendor? His name is Charley Marcuse and he’s been selling hot dogs with the Tigers since 1999. And he does have a lot of fun with his job. I can hear him in the background of tonight’s radio broadcast and the announcers took note of it at one point just a moment ago.

I found the link to the video in /r/Minecraft, and the fact that I found it there goes a long way in describing my appreciation for what he’s doing. I see some parallels in what goes on in Minecraft and what he does.

He’s even got a blog. He really seems to enjoy what he’s doing, and I think he does a great job doing it.

Via Reddit.

What comes though to me the strongest is Zack’s love of baseball. It’s nice to read about something he so obviously cares about.

Also of note is that I saw Mike Trout play AA ball about three and a half months ago. In that game (recap, box score) I didn’t get to see him hit a home run, but I did get to see him catch a fly ball, walk, advance to second, steal third, get stranded at third, strike out swinging, catch another fly ball, field a line drive, ground out, catch another fly ball, walk again, and then get thrown out at second in the first out of a double play that ended the game.

Trout is just shy of his twentieth birthday, but it seems like he might go pretty far.

Via Ben.