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Vitamins to be Banned Worldwide
(Tim Bolen, July 4th, 2005)
"Big Pharma" won a major victory in Rome, Italy today. Vitamins and minerals, for over-the-counter sale will be phased out, almost completely, in every country on Planet Earth. The "German Model" of health care will now be the law of the land - in every land. . . . Below is a press release from Diane Miller JD of the National Health Freedom Coalition, detailing the action. Diane is in Rome at the meeting. . . . Press Release - National Health Freedom Coalition: Codex Full Commission adopts Codex Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements in final form July 4, 2005, Rome Italy. by Diane Miller JD. . . . Minutes ago the full Commission of Codex Alimentarius adopted in final form, the Codex Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements. This adoption is the Step 8 adoption, the final stage of adoption for the international Codex guidelines. The Codex Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements guidelines are now official and no longer in draft form. . . . The Commission, attended by over 85 of the 171 Codex countries, adopted the guidelines by consensus method. There was brief discussion before adoption taking in comments from a small number of countries and two NGOs. . . . What this means, in the United States, is that as soon as CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) passes the House of Representatives (it has already passed the Senate), the US government will be forced, by the terms of that CAFTA agreement, to restrict vitamin and supplement sales in accordance with the "German Model" of health care. . . . If and when this happens, the hard won 1994 DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act) will be nullified, and the dismantling of the North American supplement Industry will begin. . . . However, it is not inevitable - the use of "supplements" and other "alternatives" to conventional medicine regimens represents over fifty percent (50%) of the total US health dollar spent annually. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of US adults use an "alternative," and believe in them. Opposition is already gearing up for the battle - (click here for an update). . . . This is a battle between "We the People," and the free world's biggest, and worst, enemy - ever - "Big Pharma." . . . Stay tuned . . . Tim Bolen - Consumer Advocate

posted by LoZo 12:13 PM

 

Television That Leaps Off the Screen
(Michael Krantz, New York Times, July 3, 2005)
IN a nondescript optics lab in tucked into an anonymous office park in the San Fernando Valley, the photon hackers of Deep Light are showing me the future of media. The object of their affection is a small screen on which an animated gladiator is clashing scimitars with a horned monster in a Coliseum-like setting. But this isn't a flat cartoon image: it's full 3-D space, the combatants circling each other inches from my eyes so convincingly that my hand twinges to grab them - and I'm not wearing those clunky red-and-blue cardboard glasses, either. I'm seeing a 3-D image with the naked eye. My host, Deep Light's co-founder Dan Mapes, bounces on his heels, giggling with delight. "It's cool, isn't it?" . . . Yeah, it's cool. . . . Ordinary TV sets deliver 500 lines of resolution. Most high-definition screens reach 1,050. The HD3D hits 1,280 lines and counting - which means better picture quality than that of any TV available today, all in a convincing impression of the third dimension. And here's the seriously trippy part about the new screen, which Deep Light plans to introduce at next winter's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: multiple "blades" of video enable one screen to show different programs to different viewers, at the same time. . . . Imagine what that could do to your living room. Your kid sprawls on the floor, happily splattering the virtual walls of Quake 3-D, while you sit on the couch watching the news and your spouse beside you talks with friends in a virtual chat room - all on the same TV, all at the same time, and all in 3-D. Lean a few feet to the right and the latest report from the floor of the stock exchange becomes a live 3-D chat with the couple who came over to dinner the other night; lean the other way and Junior is blasting a zombie. And something similar is going on over at the neighbor's. And halfway around the world. . . . Mr. Mapes thinks Deep Light has a pretty big trend on its side: humanity's evolution toward ever-more sophisticated representations of reality. "The brain is a media junkie," he says. "And it wants the good stuff." . . . We see the world in three dimensions, but throughout most of history, we've only been able to depict it in two. Until recently no one had come up with a better solution to this problem than goofy eyewear. When Rover sent back images from Mars, NASA scientists studied them wearing much the same glasses that audiences in 50's movie palaces donned to watch "It Came From Outer Space." . . . The South Korean government, meanwhile, recently announced an ambitious "3-D Vision 2010" project to make stereoscopic TV the worldwide standard within five years, . . . "The whole realm of TV," says Chris Chinnock, the president of the market research firm Insight Media, "is the Holy Grail of 3-D." . . . Mr. Mapes is a New Age-bedazzled baby boomer and high-tech savant who's been preaching the gospel of virtual worlds ever since the 1960's. His eclectic résumé ranges from designing light shows for Peter Gabriel to running online video-conferences for the United Nations. [See The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, an interview with Dan Mapes on UK television's Channel 4.] He was in his lab in Santa Monica, Calif., three years ago when a former employee then working in Korea called him to rave about time multiplexing. So Mr. Mapes went to a Northrop Grumman military laboratory in the San Fernando Valley, where Mr. Travis's latest demo box, a 50-inch giant, had been gathering dust. . . . And what he saw, he says, changed his career plans on the spot. He and two partners, Paul Yoon and Robert Kory, spent $2 million in investment capital and three years gathering all the relevant patents and licenses under one corporate umbrella to build their first HD3D. . . . Deep Light says that the first PC monitors with natural 3-D could be out as soon as this winter for around $5,000 and the HD3D television sets could be available by next year for $10,000 - a number that might not be out of the question for slavering home-theater freaks. These prices could drop when the technology is mass-produced. . . . "As the 3-D display market reaches a certain size," Mr. Yewdall says, "we think Hollywood will be quite interested in exploiting those screens for their libraries." Ready for "The Honeymooners" in 3-D? "Desperate 3-D Housewives?" Might your children enjoy, say, rampaging 3-D dinosaurs? . . . "Jurassic Park in 3D?" Mr. Mapes yells. "It's mind-blowing! Martial arts in 3-D are so good! Porn in 3-D? Oh my God ..." . . . Do we really need porn in 3-D? Will "Casablanca" be a better film when we can reach out and touch Ingrid Bergman? Will sitcoms be funnier and dramas more engrossing when writers create stories that move not only up/down and right/left but also in/out? . . . We're no more likely today to make an accurate prediction of the future of 3-D entertainment than the average talkie-era moviegoer would have been to anticipate "The Matrix." But when our ancestors painted bison on the walls at Lascaux, they were using the most advanced tools they had to depict their world as richly as possible, and we've been upgrading as fast as technology permits ever since. The transition to 3-D might someday look like just the next stop on a path we've been traveling all along, from sound to color to interactive - and beyond. . . . "These 3-D screens are going to be the head ends into the high-speed Internet," Mr. Mapes says. "Their ultimate application is networked virtual environments." . . . "Imagine 3-D TV hooked up to the Net," Mr. Mapes says. "I'm in California having shared experiences with friends in Indonesia. Forging deeper connections with people anywhere in the world will be one of the key factors in creating a true global village."

[COMMENT by Lorenzo: A few months ago, Dan Mapes gave me a similar tour of this incredible new tech. It brought me back to the day when, as a kid, I went to my first 3-D movie. Dan's demonstration totally blew me away. The tech that Deep Light has developed is seriously more advanced than those old movie theater experiences. Just thinking about online conferencing with a 3-D interface to the Net can be a psychedelic experience once you grok the fact that one day you will actually be able to have your very own holodeck!] . . . Live long and prosper :-).

posted by LoZo 2:10 PM