In Thursday October 14th's Philadelphia Inquirer, page 1, came a report by Barnaby J. Feder and Tom Zeller Jr. that Dubya's FDA has approved a medical data chip that would be implanted under the skin in the hand. The chip, about the size of a grain of rice, would initially be justified to be placed in people so that medical personnel could gain easy access to each person's medical records. The article pointed out the possible extension of its use to include radio tracking capability. The article mentioned the chip does not actually contain the records, but instead contains a 16 digit number on the chip. The number would then act like a user ID in a computer. The article mentioned these chips could grow into much wider usage, for example replacing dog tags for soldiers. The article mentioned that this chip sounds like the "Mark of the Beast" mentioned in the Bible. That would be a reference to the book of Revelation, chapter 13, verses 16 and 17, which says, "And he (the Beast) causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead, and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name." The Apostle John wrote this 1900 years ago.
On the heels of this Orwellian news, we learn that Check 21, a new law aimed at moving transactions to paperless, became effective Thursday. Check clearing will no longer require moving the checks, but rather just their images electronically. Basically it eliminates "float," the time it used to take for a check to clear.
And we learned yesterday that Halliburton is under investigation by the FBI. Oh boy.
This is taken from a loooooong article "McHugh on the markets" you can find at http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/mchugh103104.html .... should you so desire!
