Bar Code: All about exclusions and inclusions, Alphanumeric soup.

"Shoes and socks" Not only not required for entry here, but shooed away, as in unfashionable, especially if you came here, to the beach, during your recent Spring Break! to dip your toe in the water, or in the case of...

"Not your average Joe" As in Joe Woodland who, having come to hang out on what might be the same beach, which by now has accumulated a lot more "sands of time"...apparently not, like your beach goer then nor now, started "drawing lines in the sand" with a purpose...which eventuated in lines that can not only be transferred from product to product, but from farm to shelf, to table...that tells "them" (the cashiers, the producers and, of course, all those who now specialize in "analytics" of our buying habits)...the now iniquitous..."Bar Code" -- one which followed a code of silence that had been around since "guys" started hanging out at the bar, which preceded in time, but not spirit, what is now frequently termed the "bro code", and one which also came after the footsteps of another few dudes, codes...

Morse or Less: While named after one of the inventors of the telegraph, a code that would allow for "skilled individuals in both encoding and decoding" dots, dashes, shorter, longer pauses, to communicate even across the ocean which Mr. Woodland oversaw...a code that Samuel Morse initially envisioned numerically, but to...

"No Avail" Well, close to this as Mr. Alfred Vail re-envisioned Mr. Morse's system to include letters and numbers...more inclusive I guess...a real visionary, well before our times of such systems of full inclusion...

"X's and O's" The popularity of which had around since ancient Egypt, if tiles and other materials resembling "tic-tac-toe" boards are any indication. Letters that eventually got hijacked by those looking for a pre-text to sign off letters, especially love notes, without... 

"Spelling it out for you" Or, "Do I have to...?!" Letters, numbers, codes, visionaries that, have course, in the land of iPhone, now allowed "Us" and "Them" to collect even more data on stuff, as well as about our selfies, via QR: "...codes that can be read both horizontally and vertically..." lots of info embedded in such a small space...and time...

Spring Break! Code: The answer to the "Jeopardy" question of the day, what (don't!) say, when asked, "So, while you were down in Miami, what did you do, while not making sandcastles...couldn't you have made better use of your time there, like that Joe guy...?" 

Stuff to contemplate, while at the beach in the near future or, more likely, 'sanding' in lines at the grocery store, as you, in your own way, mark the 50th anniversary of the bar code...

BTW, the SP! code remains un-break-able to this day, despite all the efforts of grown-ups...bar none.





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