I happened to see a series of letters in a magazine the other day, the meaning for which I did not know. The letters were “RFID” and with all the other letters, numbers and symbols one must keep track of these days, somehow, the letters were “flying under the radar”; however, following a quick check of their meaning (thank God we still have open access on the internet through portals and search engines) I suspect that we all should pay closer attention to RFID.
In short, RFID stands for “Radio Frequency Identification” and is currently used by several well known manufacturers to track large portions of their inventories. They are microdot size chips with intelligent data storing capability that can be scanned by specialized readers. They became attractive to retailers because they are so small and inexpensive that they can be unobtrusively added to packaging for inventory management purposes. In reality they can be made about the size of the dot for the letter “i” in the word size or the period at the end of this sentence. Depending upon the functional purpose and the amount of the tracking or metric intelligence required they can be larger; however, so much information can be stored that they have become a key component of the new drive for national ID cards, secure area access cards, employee cards, personal health record cards and even secure counterfeit-proof currency. Beyond the tagging of inanimate products there is already use of the tags for pet identification and serious discussions are beginning on “tagging” of all criminals and, just possibly, all U.S. Citizens. I can hear the pitch now: “You never have to worry about accidentally leaving your passport behind. A biometric ID chip under the skin can be readily scanned as you go through the airport security screener." Oh, Joy! George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin must be thinking in the great beyond: “We told you so….”Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J47hny8q_J4

Wow! What a celebration of America's 233rd "Birthday" yesterday, the 4th of July. For the third year in a row, our family was priviledged to be in Boston, Massachusetts for the festivities and the fireworks. This year, the weather cooperated. Neil Diamond sang "They're Coming to America" and, that was the understatement of the year. Statistics show that the wave of immigration into America within the last 15 years will go down as one of the all time great surges in immigration; adding an immigrant population larger than that of the migration from southern and central Europe that took place at the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s. Some of the larger cities, such as New York, have as much as 20% of their current population as recently immigrated. As with past increases in immigration this creates great change in America and change begets stress. Some have ventered the statement that this is not good for America but I believe that this stress is a vital part of what makes America ever strong. So, Happy Birthday America! May you always have an open door for those "...tired and huddled masses yearning to breath free".

Dregs from the morning coffee on July 2nd:
Isn’t it interesting that when you achieve the thing you wanted, in addition to the joy, there is always an undercurrent of sadness. June 30th was the official “last day” for American forces to take the front line police and terroristic response duties for Iraqi cities and territories. After all of the hubris and resultant angst of the past seven years America is finally going to return the sovereignty of Iraq back to the Iraqi people. As we do, the news sources are filled with stories of both Iraqi celebration and American pride in accomplishment. The belief that nearly our entire 130,000 Iraq based troops will be coming home or redeployed to other areas of the world within the next year brings joy to both the Iraqis and Americans alike. America’s involvement has moved to one of planning and technical assistance, logistical support and information gathering. But, as we leave, other news stories already make me very uneasy about the future of Iraq. Terroristic attacks within Iraq are on the increase. The recent auction of oil rights within this nation possessing the third largest oil reserves in the world was a bust with only the Chinese acquiring one of the available field sites. And, in the not-so-far-off “Land of the Pure” the Taliban has seen a strong resurgence that has become a threat to the stability of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It would seem that for all of the human, material, international political relationship and financial cost of America’s involvement in Iraq the vision of the future for the Iraqis, the region and the American international policy should be much brighter. I guess that’s where the sadness part comes from.