In a world where corporate takeovers are becoming more and more the norm, sometimes one comes out of nowhere and surprises you.  When it was announced today that Disney has purchased Marvel, I must admit to a bit of shock.

Much like when they bought Pixar, this represents a sound strategic move for Disney.  It allows them to build on one of their core strengths, animation, while diversifying into a genre that appeals to the 18-35 male demographic.  That demographic is one that Disney has had trouble capturing – until now.

Bringing characters such as Spider-man, Iron Man, and the Incredible Hulk into the Disney fold is a stroke of genius.  While Marvel had begun to finance and produce their own movies, now they have the back end distribution and infrastructure to go with it.

Marvel throughout the years has developed over 5,000 unique characters.  Combine these characters with Pixar’s genius and what kind of movie do you think could be made?  I am rather excited to see the possibility.  As for the feature film division of Marvel, I think Disney will leave that end of things rather untouched.  They are businessmen first and foremost and the Marvel movies make a very good profit.  Now, with Disney’s backing, I am sure that these films will make even more money.

This is not the first time that a major studio has owned a comic book company.  DC Comics, the home of Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Superman among others, has been owned by Warner Brothers for almost forty years.

The last couple of weeks have been very humid around here.  The temperature has hovered around 33 degrees, but due to the humidity it has felt like 43 degrees.  We can’t complain, however – July was one of the rainiest of all time (or so it felt).  Last Friday, the heat wave came crashing down as Ontario experienced a couple of tornadoes.  Nothing like Hurricane Hazel in the 1950′s, however.  Since then, the temperature has been pretty moderate.

Next up on the Summer of Fun 2009 Tour was the CNE.  The Canadian National Exhibition has been around for 138 years, and is one of the largest fairs in North America.  On Friday, which was opening day, admission prices were slashed to $1.75 to celebrate Toronto’s 175th birthday.  As you can imagine, there was a ridiculous lineup but we were able to bypass 90% of it because we found a smaller line.  Sometimes the sun just shines in the right way.

I haven’t been to the CNE in a few years, and it seems that it is even larger now.  Wandering through the aisles of carny games, where you essentially pay $5.00 for a small stuffed animal, or trading up to a larger one…these have not changed much.  They are still the same games from years gone by, and each of them are designed so that you lose.  I wonder how much money the operators of these games make.  Given that it is all in cash, and that the employees are probably paid minimum wage, I would gather a great deal.  Some people think that they only show up to one fair, but they do not.  These trailers of games are in operation year round.  Good for them I suppose, but they did not sucker me in this year.  I do not have much use for stuffed animals nowadays.

I have always enjoyed the food and agricultural buildings, however.  The food building has something for everyone, from the crappy pizza to Indian food to Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.    I indulged in a large Montreal smoked meat sandwich.  It was greasy, large, and tasty.  It was $5.50, which wasn’t a bad price at all.  Wandering over to the agricultural building was also an interesting experience.  I am a city boy, and haven’t spent much time at all around the farm.  Seeing animals such as chickens, lambs, goats, horses, pigs, cows, turkeys, llamas and alpacas up close is interesting.  One cow in particular was very friendly with me and spent an inordinate amount of time licking my hand with her 8″ tongue.  Needless to say, I was grateful for the handwashing stations that had been setup.

There was also a building that was offering all sorts of craft goods for sale, as well as novelty items, clothing, cheap jewellery, and sports memorabilia.  It was similar to a flea market, but a bit more classy.  I didn’t see anything that tickled my fancy, but I got some early Christmas ideas from them.  I never have been much of a browser – I usually have a pretty good idea of what I am looking for prior to purchasing it.

All in all, a good time was had, and it certainly was not expensive.   As the Summer of Fun continues, I shall be sure to blog about it.

The humidity the last few days has been through the roof.  Wow.  So far, the weather this summer has been rather modest, and it was a rather wet July.  The temperature yesterday was 33 degrees, but the “feels like” was hovering around 43 degrees.  I opened the door and stepped outside and it felt like I was suddenly swimming in pea soup.  Today was not as bad, but close.  It was made worse by the fact that I was working in a school that did not have the air conditioning functioning – so it was nearly 100 degrees in the room.  Rather unbearable, and especially by me.  Anybody who knows me knows how much I detest the humidity.  I sweat like a pig, and I don’t like that feeling one bit.  Furthermore, it makes it hard to concentrate on the task at hand because you are so terribly uncomfortable.

Years ago in my private blog, I commented on Michael Vick.  I went to reread what I wrote at the time and the hatred that I had for this man (or moreso, what he had done) bled through the monitor at me.  Dog fighting is not something that I could ever condone.  While I am not a true animal lover, I am not one who enjoys watching them suffer cruelly for our amusement either.

I am not terribly close to animals because I was always allergic to them.  As a result, we never had a family pet other than some fish and my brother’s hamster.  A few years ago, I had a rabbit, which oddly I did not have an allergy too.

Regardless, what Michael Vick did was wrong, both legally and morally.  And for his crimes, he has paid a huge price.  It has cost him his freedom, fines, his career, shame, and personal bankruptcy.  I am shedding no tears for Michael Vick, as he got what he deserved.

In so saying that, he deserves a second chance.

Today, the NFL reinstated him as an active player, allowing him to try and ressurect his career.  He is unable to play in a regular season game until at least Week 6, but can participate in practices, training sessions, and player meetings.  Hopefully he is able to catch on with a team and live up to the high expectations that people had for him when he was the NFL’s highest paid player (to clarify, by “high expectations” I mean both personally and professionally).

I hope Micheal Vick can turn his life around.  Nobody wants to see somebody fail.  I would say though, to all the PETA demonstrators hounding Vick, to go home.  You have had two years to say your peace and the man has paid his debt to society.

Social networking sites are now all the rage.  MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Twitter now dominate the Internet as much as Google and YouTube.  The fascinate people and consume their time like nothing else has ever done before.  People on average spend more time on these sites than they do in front of the television (which I call, as Doctor Who so brilliantly put it, The Idiot’s Lantern).

I understand the reasons behind Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace.  For those people who do not wish to spend time learning web page design, or do not wish to pay for their own site, it gives them an instant quick and ready presence on the Internet to interact with others.  Sharing photos, video, and information about yourself is addictive.  It’s an ego tweak for some and a way to keep people informed for others.

Yet, I ask myself “How much is too much?”  High school students spend so much time on Facebook during their classes that they do not get anything done.  They will drop the class if they cannot access Facebook.  People at work are the same.  They are addicted to the site.  They do not have the time to get their work done, but somehow have the time to update their Facebook status hourly. 

Reuters estimates that Facebook costs Australian companies upwards of $4.5 billion dollars a year.  In the United Kingdom, the figure is estimated to be $275 million dollars per day.  I.T. security firm Global Secure Systems surveyed 1,000 school kids aged 13 to 17 in London, England.  52% of kids surveyed used classroom time to surf social networking sites, and 50% of these teenagers said they spent over thirty minutes a day browsing them.  The average user spends 20 minutes a day logged into Facebook, and two thirds of all users login at least once a day.

That’s a lot of time.

Perhaps we are witnessing a social revolution of sorts.  An offline change to an online presence.  As for me personally, I login to Facebook perhaps every other day and generally do not spend more than a couple of minutes there.  Admittedly, it is a convenient method to keep up to date with the people around you.  As for Twitter, I do have an account, though I have no use for it at the moment.

Thinking through some more, I do see one benefit of sites such as Twitter, in that they allow people in oppressed nations such as North Korea, Iran, and China to post real time updates of happenings that their respective governments may wish to suppress.  A new method of global communication that every government is powerless to stop.

The weather is not helping my summer of fun.  Its hard to get out and do things when it is raining all the time.  In as much as I do not like the super hot humid weather, I like the rain even less.  Getting wet while trying to enjoy yourself sucks (unless you happen to be at a water park).

In any event, if the weather cooperates, I intend to head out to the Niagara region for the long weekend.  I will traverse through Buffalo, as well as Niagara Falls (Clifton Hill) and Marineland.  It should make for a nice mini-vacation away from everything.

With any luck, the Toronto city-workers strike will end and then I can get the CityPass and enjoy Toronto some more.  The city is beginning to smell pretty bad.  It does not look to good, either.  People will soon lose patience and start dumping their garbage everywhere, and they will not care about getting a ticket.  Soon, it will become a public health hazard.

It’s hard to blame the city, however.  In this case, the workers are the ones being greedy, as I mentioned in a previous post.  My suggestion would be to try and break the union.  The facts are simple.  Business is down, tourism is down, and unemployement is high.  Not exactly the best time to strike.

I don’t think the union has much to worry about, however.  David Miller (the mayor of Toronto) is pro-union and would never agree to such a drastic maneuver.  The unions supported his bid to get elected, and turning his back on them would likely seal his political career.

This little girl was abducted eleven weeks ago.  I have refrained from commenting so insofar as I have been watching the events unfold.  The police have now found her body and have two people in custody, both of whom has been charged with capital murder.  Oddly, however, they have yet to acknowledge or confirm that Victoria Stafford has been murdered.  Now that they have the little girls remains, I’m sure this will happen in short order.

On a number of fronts this entire case has been a comedy of errors.  Unfortunately, the life of a little girl has been lost and nobody is laughing.  There are so many questions to still be answered.  The police will catch a lot of heat for not issueing an Amber Alert immediately following the disappearance.  At the time, Tori’s disappearance did not meet the strict criteria of an Amber Alert, though I still believe that instead of following the letter of the criteria they should have followed the spirit in which it was written.  While this in the long term may lead to a few more false positives, it would have absolved them of any blame in the disappearance.  Sadly, we can only wonder “what if,” because we will never know if that would have made a difference.

How Tori’s parents have conducted themselves thus far is somewhat deploreable as well.  Instead of letting police investigators do their jobs, they are holding daily news conferences.  For what reason, I ask?  Do they like the media spotlight on themselves?  Compounding the issue is that they do not get along, are fighting in public, and have dragged this out into the public eye.  I understand their frustration, but this conflict solves nothing.  Their little girl is gone forever.

Crimes such as these both sadden and scare me.  I wonder how people such as the monsters who committed this heinous crime wander among us.  The two people in custody are innocent until proven guilty.  To that end it is premature to judge them, as they are innocent until proven guilty.  Should they found guilty, they will both be imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives.  Unfortunately, after fifteen years they can apply under the “Faint Hope Clause” for early parole (as they are not multiple murderers).  Ten percent of the criminals who apply are granted parole.  The Conservative Government has introduced a motion to repeal this part of the criminal code, but the bill has not passed through the House of Commons as of yet.

I’m sure there are many Liberals out there who will be against repealing the Faint Hope Clause.  Yet I would say to each and every one of them, if it was their child, would they like to see their murderer back out on the streets in fifteen years?  My guess is that I think not.  Being sentenced to life in prison should mean life.  Period.  You do not send child killers to prison in the hope that you can rehabilitate them, you send them to prison to serve out their punishment meted out by a jury of their peers.

As one can natually understand, the public at large is outraged and they want justice.  Every time a crime such as this occurs, there are always calls to bring back capital punishment.  Some will say that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent.  I personally do not see it as a deterrent either.  I see it as an eye for an eye.  Personally, I would have no qualms about administering a lethal injection or pulling the trigger.

No matter what happens to the killers of Tori Stafford however, it does not bring her back.  She is still dead.  Gone forever.

Cecilia Zhang, Alison Parrot, Holly Jones, Kristen French, Leslie Mahaffy, and so many others.  Tori Stafford’s name has been added to theirs.  Children murdered.  Lives unfulfilled.

Microsoft is venturing in the world of the free, and has announced that they will be making a version of their popular office software available for free sometime early in 2010.  This represents a very marked shift in their corporate strategy.  Microsoft Office is one of the largest moneymakers for the company, accounting for approximately $20 billion dollars in sales annually.

This is great news for personal users, who would be more than likely not to purchase a new copy of office every couple of years.  They would rather stick with their copy of Office ’95 (or 97 or whatever) because there is no fundamental need to upgrade.  I don’t think Microsoft will lose much here.  As we all know, piracy is rampant and I’m sure that this announcement will curb that somewhat as well.  There is no need to steal something that is being given away for free.

The complimentary version of Office 2010 will run within a browser (and somewhat surprisingly, Mozilla and Firefox will be supported natively).  Microsoft will never be the corporate darling of the mass majority of users, yet their software is used by these same people worldwide.  Sometimes, I think that is a tad hypocritical, for if you do not like the company (and bitch about their products constantly) then perhaps you should not use them.

In a different track, the darling corporation of Internet users, Google, is pursuing a different track.  Their version of Google Apps now has a yearly charge of $50.00 (though the free version still remains).  It seems that they are slowly evolving into a more Microsoft-like corporation.  I do not condemn them, however.  The simple fact is that a company cannot survive by giving everything away for free.  If you live by the free, you die by the free.

Microsoft and Google are now both aggressively pursuing the corporate (or B2B) market.  Microsoft has known for years, and as Google is now finding out, that while providing their products for little or no cost to consumers, they have to profit significantly through the corporate sector to survive.  They can make money through “free” by selling advertising and so forth, but they cannot do this forever.  Eventually another company will take over.  Good examples of this are Google taking over from Yahoo, or Facebook taking over from MySpace who took over from Friendster.