Somethings are better to remain/become a cottage industry.
This is one. While these prototypes would fit what I imagine the packaging a cottage industry cannabis operation would produce, if there were the impetus to move the product out of its current packaging, I shudder to think what the marketers for the likes of mass-produced/consumed beers would come up with.
Also, I imagine the cognitive dissonance of the anti-drug commercials, like the one with pot smokers hitting the child on a bike while pulling away from a drive-thru window contrasted with commercials touting the virtues and benefits of legal pot would be too much for some to handle.
It's illegal to advertise tobacco on television, and hard liquor is never advertised either out of social norms. Also, open and legal production of cannabis would improve quality and variety while open and legal distribution would help too.
Whenever I go grocery shopping, there are the mass-produced cheap beers, but there are also good imports and microbrews. The wine aisle has even greater variety. Why would weed be different?
These are all off-the-top of my head examples of commercials I've seen on TV... maybe you meant broadcast vs cable television? Or are you outside of the US? (I assumed you were in the USA b/c of the no cigarette commercials comment... I think that's only in the US...)
I was thinking about this the other day, a couple things that came to mind were -
Is it not due to genetic diversity that we see the great complexity of species that have evolved on this planet, and the resiliency of the biosphere?
It would seem that the introduction of species that are in many ways genetically identical would lead to similar problems that are found in the monoculture crop production of industrial farming, i.e. greater susceptibility to pests and disease.
I also get the feeling that potential risks are not properly accounted for in the current system where wealth is often seen as arbitrary fiat capital and not as the health of our environment, the real wealth as it allows human beings to flourish and fuels the wealth of our ideas and actions.
Say there were detrimental effects of gmo food consumption how long would it take the public to become informed? There is still widespread use of plastics and chemicals with documented scientifically evidenced deleterious health effects. I suspect more people are 'marketed to' than read scientific reports.
There are the classic 'case study accomplishments' of gmo like the modified rice that provided vitamin A to a malnourished population. Counterpoint to this is that we live on an abundantly productive planet and the obstacles to proper nourishment of the members of our species are typically political.
We don't see large percentages of other species that are under-nourished, we also don't see other species that have developed lopsided and convoluted systems as ours have.
Regarding Monsanto et al. -
" Big Biotech with Monsanto leading the pack wants to replace those millions of years with seeds like the Terminator (named for the action hero governor of California) which goes sterile after one growing cycle and obligates farmers (they sign binding contracts with Monsanto) to buy more, a process Mexican investigator Silvia Ribiero tags "bio-slavery". "
- http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02142007.html
" Farmers are forced to sign contracts, agreeing to buy GMO seed at a company-fixed price. Monsanto's super-duper "Terminator" seed, named after California's action hero governor, goes sterile after one growing cycle and the campesinos are obligated to buy more. By getting hooked on Monsanto, Mexican farmers, once seed savers and repositories themselves of the knowledge of their inner workings, become consumers of seed, an arrangement that augurs poorly for the survival of Mexico's many native corns. "
If the number of corn species declines what happens if something like Panama disease that affects bananas were to strike corn crops? Ever more genetic modification, beholden to just a few large corporations for the solution?
A cynic might point out a certain degree of environmental havoc might work to the benefit of gmo companies as far as the short-sighted goals of a fiat currency profit are concerned.
" Moreover, as farmers from other climes who have resisted Monsanto and refused to buy into the GMO blitz, have learned only too traumatically, pollen blowing off contaminated fields will spread to non-GMO crops. Even more egregiously, Monsanto will then send "inspectors" (often off-duty cops) to your farm and detect their patented strains in your fields and charge you with stealing the corporation's property. "
" Mexican corn is, of course, not the only native crop that is being disappeared by global capitalism. Native seeds are under siege from pole to pole. In Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together to form the birthplace of agriculture, one of the very first acts of George Bush's neo-colonial satrap L. Paul Brenner was to issue the notorious Order 81 criminalizing the possession of native seeds. The U.S. military spread out throughout the land distributing little packets of GMO seeds, the euphemistically dubbed Operation "Amber Waves." To make sure that Iraq would no longer have a native agriculture, the national seed bank, located at Abu Ghraib, was looted and set afire. "
- http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11212007.html
To see a company attempting to become an arbiter of food supply by claiming property rights over plants that have evolved to the benefit of all the species on this planet naturally raises some questions and opposition.
Not just could, but as the parent comment implied, given the nature of the system the answer is unequivocally yes.
The system serves to record the arrows you've clicked, therefore this information must be stored somewhere.
Someone with access to this this information should be able to determine "what stuff an account upvoted," unless the system has been designed to obfuscate the connections(i.e. accounts & clicked items) at the database level.
Wait a minute, this has happened to me during a lightning storm. The phone rang, and the caller insisted that I had called them. I thought it was just some freakish bug in the phone system caused by the storm, but now you made me wonder if it was actually a prank instead.
Any ideas on the software used for creating the images?