Investing in marijuana industry still extremely speculative

With four states having legalized marijuana and more considering it, investors might be thinking pot is the next big thing. But marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, so Wall Street and big business are taking a hands off approach to the potential cash crop.
The website MarijuanaStocks.com lists 38 cannabis-related stocks. Nearly all of them are penny stocks, which are prone to market manipulation and bankruptcy. Three tickers on its list of Marijuana Stock Quotes are trading at less than a penny a share.
Marijuana Business Daily offers a list of 11 marijuana stocks. Same story: a bunch of crappy penny stocks that no one should touch with a 10-foot pole.
These sorry lists of public companies with ties to the cannabis trade don’t inspire much confidence in the industry.
Mark A.R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles, told Bloomberg that he’s skeptical about prospects for the recreational marijuana industry.
“I just don’t see how there’s money to be made producing an agricultural commodity,” he said. “Once this is a competitive market, prices will be driven down to the level of costs. Costs for cannabis are very small, if it’s produced legally.”
One “real” company connected with the marijuana business is GW Pharmaceuticals. It develops cannaboids for the treatment of cancer pain, multiple sclerosis spasticity and epilepsy. (See article at Investors.com.) It has a real business with a differentiated product offering.
You can’t say the same for the other guys.

Marijuana lifestyle starts getting mainstream media coverage

With the political winds changing, the mainstream media has shifted its coverage of marijuana from law enforcement and the War on Drugs to the marijuana lifestyle and business.
After Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012, the Denver Post started a marijuana section. The website currently features advertisements for Sticky Buds, a Denver pot dispensary; and a cannabis conference called Indo Expo, which has the motto “Where green is the new gold.”
In Washington state, which also legalized pot in 2012, the Seattle Times has a blog called The Evergreen.
NBC News has an online news page called Legal Pot.
The Huffington Post has a section called Huff Post Marijuana.
CNN has announced plans to do a series on the business of marijuana called “High Profits.” The show will launch in 2015 and cover the “moguls of marijuana,” EW reported.
Libertarian magazine Reason has done extensive coverage of the marijuana legalization debate. Its writing on the subject is top notch.
Of course, these are good times for niche publications focused on marijuana, including High Times, Cannabis News, Marijuana.com, Weedist and Ganjapreneur.

Photo: Complimentary bag of Doritos handed out by the Seattle Police Department at Seattle Hempfest in August. (Photo by Cannabis Culture.)

Humorous marijuana legalization artwork

The marijuana legalization movement has been aided by social media. People have used Facebook, Twitter and other online services to spread messages about the benefits of legalized pot. Often those messages come with humorous artwork.
What follows are some examples of those pieces of art.
CollegeHumor introduced Bubbles the Sloth as a marijuana mascot in its feature “If Drugs Had Mascots.”

DeviantArt user Ryan, aka Stareatthesun2, showed what a pack of Marlboro brand marijuana cigarettes would look like.

He also posted an ad for pot in the vein of Absolut vodka.

One Photoshop artist showed what a commercial marijuana business could look like by altering a McDonald’s restaurant sign.

One organization posted an informational poster showing that top-flight athletes Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt are marijuana users.

Earlier this week, I wrote that President Barack Obama should take the lead to legalize marijuana on the federal level. One artist altered an Obama Hope campaign poster to say “Yes We Can(nabis).”

A series of old-fashion style marijuana promotion posters have funny phrases like “Marijuana: Proud supporters of the snack food industry!”

And finally here’s how one anti-drug campaign was an epic fail.

President Obama should push for legalizing marijuana

With successful ballot measures in last week’s midterm elections, the number of states that have legalized marijuana doubled to four.
Alaska and Oregon joined Colorado and Washington state, which legalized pot in 2012. Voters in the District of Columbia also legalized marijuana last week, but only for possession, home cultivation and sharing, not commercial production or distribution.
In 2016, marijuana legalization is expected to be on the ballot in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana and Nevada.
The legalization of marijuana is an admission that the decades-long War on Drugs was a costly mistake, much like the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
But the federal government still considers marijuana a controlled substance. That fact is preventing banks, Wall Street and big businesses like tobacco companies from getting involved in the potentially lucrative market.
President Barack Obama, a lame-duck politician who has admitted to smoking pot in his youth, should use what little political capital he has left to push for legalizing marijuana at the federal level.
Obama is a hypocrite for using marijuana when he was young but standing by as law enforcement continues to crack down on the drug. His administration has bullied legal medical marijuana businesses and strong-armed banks into rejecting legal marijuana money.
The tide is turning though. The general public is recognizing that marijuana has legitimate medical uses and is at least as safe as alcohol. They also see the harmful impact that criminalizing the weed has had on society.
After all, it’s doubtful Obama would ever have become president if he had been caught in possession of marijuana as a youth. Many thousands of men and women have had their records stained by criminal prosecution for the drug.

Photo: Stylized depictions of famous marijuana users including Barack Obama. The artwork, called “Celebrity Weedists,” was created by Michael Weinfeld for the Weedist.

Tech-media-tainment turns 6

Six years ago today I decided to start blogging. I began Tech-media-tainment mostly as a writing exercise to learn about blogging and to discuss my varied interests in a journalistic way.
Unlike a lot of blogs out there, I always intended to write for a larger audience. I wasn’t going to do an online diary or family journal. I wanted to use my journalism skills to write about things I couldn’t in my day job as a technology business writer.
Tech-media-tainment is a catch-all blog that discusses “entertainment, pop culture, personal technology and media,” as the description says. I look for angles that I don’t see presented elsewhere in the online media.
The blog is hosted on Blogger, Google’s free blogging platform. Much of the traffic for articles on the site comes from Google searches.
To date, Tech-media-tainment, aka TMT, has generated nearly 1.81 million pageviews for 1,080 posts since Nov. 6, 2008.
Nearly 61% of visits to TMT have come from the U.S. Canada is second with 4.6% of pageviews, followed by U.K. (3.8%), Australia (3.1%) and India (2.2%).
Far and away the most popular blog items on TMT have been about the Lingerie Football League, now called the Legends Football League. Web surfers are particularly interested in “wardrobe malfunctions” among the female athletes. I haven’t written on the subject in a long time, but those articles still generate significant traffic.
I’ve become a less frequent poster to TMT over the years.
In my first full year of blogging (2009), I averaged 6.2 blog items a week. That slipped to 4.3 a week the next year and 3 a week in 2011. This year, I’m averaging 2.4 items a week.
But hopefully the quality of the items is better now than in the high volume years.

Photo from I Can Has Cheezburger. 

16 notable Internet 404 error pages

Internet 404 error pages are the Easter eggs of the Web. They’re hidden from view and can be fun to find.
That’s because website designers have put some thought into their 404 pages. They figure that if web surfers are surprised to find the content they’re looking for is gone, at least they should get a pleasant surprise as well.
Web content companies in particular tend to make entertaining 404 pages.
What follows are 16 Internet error pages I’ve collected since my last post on the subject.

Discovery Communications’ Animal Planet webpage shows a kitten stuck in a coffee mug. (See above.)

App Annie shows a trio of hovering cats.

CollegeHumor depicts a battle of fictional creatures.

Yahoo’s Flickr has a photo of a Chinese girl pulling a toy panda.

Imgur has an art gallery of animals with googly eyes.

Viacom’s Nick Jr. has Brobee from “Yo Gabba Gabba!” trying to fix the page.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame shows a broken electric guitar.

The Smithsonian National Zoo has a flock of flamingos.

The Onion has a southern gentleman who says, “Clearly, this is because you have damaged the inter-net.”

The Chicago Tribune has a character called Colonel Tribune who tells you that you’ve lost your way.

Yahoo’s Tumblr has a disco ball among the rotation of images for its 404 page.

Feedly shows a broken Internet cloud.

Hootsuite shows owls repairing damaged Internet pipes.

InSports has a pile of sports equipment.

Previous posts on the subject of Internet 404 error pages: 

Internet company histories and website error pages (Aug. 11, 2013)

Obama-Biden 2012 website appears to make fun of Biden on error page (Oct. 2, 2012)

10 fun webpage error messages (Sept. 26, 2012)

24 notable webpage error messages (Oct. 30, 2011)

Porn biz gets jump on 2016 presidential race with lesbian parody of Hillary Clinton

The pornography industry has a long tradition of parodying political figures. It particularly likes to make fun of family values-preaching politicians by portraying them as lustful adulterers.
The U.S. presidential election every four years usually brings a fresh batch of porn parodies.
President Barack Obama has been portrayed in five porn parodies since taking office, most recently with “White House Orgy” earlier this year.
But former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, holds the record for most porn parodies of a politician. She’s been knocked in 10 porn parodies to date.
Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are tied for third after Obama, with four porn parodies each.
Filly Films has kicked off the 2016 presidential election race with a lesbian porn parody about Hillary Clinton, the former first lady turned senator turned secretary of state. She’s widely expected to run for the Democratic nomination for president, following the footsteps of her husband, Bill.
The porn flick is called “Between the Headlines,” which stars Nina Hartley as Hillary. In the movie, Hillary gets caught in a lesbian tryst with First Lady Michelle Obama, played by Lotus Lain. A synopsis of the movie says it also contains portrayals of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
What next? A Chris Christie porn parody? Please, no.