“
I've given him more mixed signals than a dyslexic Morse code operator.
”
”
Rachel Cohn (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)
“
It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.
”
”
Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)
“
This was our language: half-truths, obvious lies, accusations neither one of us would ever make. It was a system eery bit as complicated as Morse code or the dancing of bees. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Every Other Day)
“
Annabeth, you know Morse code?” “Of course.” “So does Leo.” Piper handed her the mirror. “He’ll be watching from the ship. Go to the ridge—” “And flash him!” Annabeth’s face reddened. “That came out wrong. But yeah, good idea.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5))
“
My brows rose. “You want your jeans off?” She pressed her cheek against my chest and tapped my leg once. I guessed that was drunk Morse code for yes.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Frigid (Frigid, #1))
“
your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before you, I replied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm you play upon me, drumming me taught.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson
“
No, Shawn, he did a lovely little choreographed number and tapped it out in Morse Code.
”
”
Abigail Roux (The Archer)
“
What did heartbroken people do before phones? Come home and stare at the mailbox? Stand in their driveway and wait for the stagecoach? Run to the Western Union to see if anyone had Morse Coded them? Stare into the sky waiting for the messenger pigeon?
”
”
Greg Behrendt (It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy)
“
Milquetoast girls raised on princess stories might sit tight and bat their eyelashes in desperate Morse code--notice me, like me, please--but I am not that girl.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Night of Cake & Puppets (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1.5))
“
I glanced at Carson, who had promised things would be alright. His gaze was on the floor, and a muscle in his jaw flexed rhythmically but unhelpfully. If he was trying to send me a message, I was out of luck, because I'd never learned Morse Code for Assholes.
”
”
Rosemary Clement-Moore (Spirit and Dust (Goodnight Family #2))
“
I miss you, I blink in Morse code. I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth.
”
”
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
“
The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world. The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner. It has no pain receptors, literally no feelings. It has never felt warm sunshine or a soft breeze. To your brain, the world is just a stream of electrical pulses, like taps of Morse code. And out of this bare and neutral information it creates for you—quite literally creates—a vibrant, three-dimensional, sensually engaging universe. Your brain is you. Everything else is just plumbing and scaffolding.
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
“
Jackie’s good arm was out the window, the sandy air tickling her skin with hundreds of inconsequential stings, a tangible Morse code saying something meaningless. Jackie
”
”
Joseph Fink (Welcome to Night Vale)
“
What the hell. Was he going to bring out a gramophone or Morse code machine too?
”
”
Shirley Marr (Fury)
“
Put those heels away. That click, click, click, click is Morse code for rapists. It says their sentence will be lenient or non-existent. If only she didn't wear stilettos. If only she didn't walk through a park. If only she didn't go out at night.
”
”
Jenni Fagan (Hex)
“
Our hearts thundered against each other, speaking in Morse code just how precious this was
”
”
Pepper Winters (Third Debt (Indebted, #4))
“
You know Morse Code?” Avian asked as we walked up.
“My grandpa thought it was a fun game when I was little,” West said as he rubbed his eyes again. ”That’s a scientist’s version of fun for you.
”
”
Keary Taylor (Eden (The Eden Trilogy, #1))
“
I reached for the switch on my desk lamp and flashed HELLO.
The lights switched off in Cassidy's bedroom, and her flashlight flicked on.
SORRY.
"She's sorry," I told Cooper, because he didn't understand Morse code.
He lifted his head as if to say But you already knew that, old sport.
Her flashlight flickered again.
FORGIVE ME.
This time, I didn't hesitate.
ALWAYS, I replied.
”
”
Robyn Schneider (The Beginning of Everything)
“
You are on your way when you decipher the pounding of rain as Morse code for making progress.
”
”
Kate Harris (Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road)
“
As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad’s last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
“
Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end
of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds
of women—those you write poems about
and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction
lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, cast
as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power
never put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merely
a symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,
as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed
antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long
regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don’t know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light
of a candle being blown out travels faster
than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit,
but I do know that all our huffing and puffing
into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick
birthday candle—didn’t make the silence
any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses
I scrawled on your neck were written
in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you
so hard one of your legs would pop out
of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press
your face against the porthole of my submarine.
I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years
to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding
off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding
over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate
to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy
of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph
from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.
”
”
Jeffrey McDaniel
“
[...] That's Beethoven's fifth...
Da da da dum!
Heh heh. That's morse code, y'know.
Uh, morse code?
Hmm. It's morse code for the letter "v".
”
”
Alan Moore
“
Morse code didn’t leave a paper trail, or an email thread on the screen of your tablet. She would never be able to scroll back and reread the exchange she’d just had with Rufus.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Seveneves)
“
There is her heart. I've never seen one beating.I had no idea they moved so much. You put your hand on your heart and you picture something pulsing slightly but basically still, like a hand on a desktop tapping Morse code. This things is going wild in there. It's a mixing-machine part, a stoat squirming in its burrow, an alien life form that's just won a Pontiac on The Price Is Right. If you were looking for the home of the human body's animating spirit, I could imagine believing it to be here, for the simple reason that it is the human body's most animated organ.
”
”
Mary Roach (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers)
“
On some days, writing is wonderful. On the days when it is wonderful, it feels like you are the God of a universe that the rest of the world is not yet privy to. And then on some days, it is not wonderful; those days when nothing is coming and the cursor seems to be openly mocking you, blinking out ‘YOU SUCK AT WRITING AND YOU’RE UGLY AS BALLS’ in Morse code.
”
”
Leigh Whannell
“
I headed out for an EVA. This time, being very careful while lugging rocks around, I spelled out a Morse code message: “INJURED BACK. BETTER NOW. CONTINUING ROVER MODS.” That was enough physical labor for today. I don’t want to overdo it. Think I’ll have a bath.
”
”
Andy Weir (The Martian)
“
It was a peculiar kind of night, as if fate had planned this night, long ago, and this night was our destiny, right or wrong. It was darkness lit up by the moon so full and bright, and the stars seemed to flash Morse Code beams to one another . . . fate accomplished.. . .
”
”
V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1))
“
This man, this Casimir, which is the name of the young man in question - and it should have told me something, a dirty translation of it means "destroyer of peace" - was nothing to me, a single blip in the Morse code of my life, something too brief to read. He was a phoneme, a dangling modifier, a printer's orphan.
”
”
Chelsea G. Summers (A Certain Hunger)
“
People don't always go down in history for the vigor with which they perform their jobs. We remember Louis the Fifteenth . . . for his furniture; we remember Pierre Léotard, despite his being the greatest trapeze artist ever, for his leotard. The idea is to give your name to something, like the zeppelin, the newton, Morse code, the chicuelina.
”
”
David Toscana (Our Lady of the Circus)
“
Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people texted, the closer American came to being a nation at war.
”
”
Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins)
“
What ? said Josie, able to hear her name if it was so much as tapped out in Morse code on a different continent.
”
”
Kiera Cass (The Crown (The Selection, #5))
“
Sam squeezes my hand twice, a lovers' Morse code in the dark.
”
”
Sophie Cousens (The Good Part)
“
We still have an hour, Fee.” He licked his lips. “And I’m hungry for pussy.” My clit did a series of victory throbs, which was probably suck me now in Morse code,
”
”
Debbie Cassidy (Reaper Unveiled (Deadside Reapers #4))
“
You’re British, you’re a priest, you’re a medical doctor, you can handle a rifle, you know Morse Code, and most importantly of all, you’re a fucking pain in the ass – so off you go!
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
There'll be the lightning bugs with their Morse code display,
And shooting stars and constellations to befriend;
The dragonflies will keep us from going astray,
As we search for new adventures 'round every bend.
-excerpted from the poem 'The Huge Playroom that is Nature' in the book FROM GUAM TO CROWN CITY CORONADO (THANKS TO HERMANN, MISSOURI): A JOURNEY IN POESY
”
”
Mariecor Ruediger
“
Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Æschylus and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll (Some Mistakes of Moses)
“
At first I couldn't believe it. I waited, not moving my cock, which was rock hard thanks to this pulsing grip.
But yes, here it was again. The same pattern, the same rhythm.
I was being signaled by an asshole in Morse code. And it was signaling SOS.
”
”
James Lear (The Secret Tunnel (Mitch Mitchell Mystery, #2))
“
He makes me blind, I couldn't even read him if I ran my hands over his face, there's nothing there to feel for clues. There is no brail written with frowns, no Morse code to read with a tense tic of his jaw, just me in the dark even though it is light. My
”
”
Poppet (Bratva (Darkroom Saga #5))
“
by letter in Morse code. Kittinger says it was a joke, but Simons didn’t take it that way. (Morse code has always been a tough medium for humor.) In his memoir Man High, Simons recalls thinking that “the weird and little understood breakaway phenomenon could be taking hold of Kittinger’s mind,…that he…was gripped in this strange reverie and was hellbent on flying on and on without regard for the consequences.” Simons compared the breakaway phenomenon to “the deadly raptures of the deep.” “Rapture of the deep” is a medical condition
”
”
Mary Roach (Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void)
“
If you think of the Bill of Rights like a hostage video, the first eight are Madison saying, “They are treating me well. I am being fed and receiving medical treatment for my injuries.” The last two are when he blinks out “They electrocuted my testicles” in Morse code before they cut the feed.
”
”
Elie Mystal (Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution)
“
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’... Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.
”
”
Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)
“
The lesson provided by Morse’s code is that it matters profoundly how one translates a message into electrical signals. This matter is at the very heart of communication theory.
”
”
John Robinson Pierce (An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics))
“
I live my life according to a code. You might know it by the surname Morse.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Who Moved My Choose?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change by Deciding to Let Indecision Into Your Life)
“
After the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 P.M., the ship’s radio operator sent out an SOS. An SOS is the international distress signal in Morse code. Unfortunately, the only ship near the Titanic had turned off its radio for the night. All the other ships who received the message were too far away to help. When the Titanic sank around 2:20 A.M., she was all alone.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad’s last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
“
Where is he?” Leo sat up, but his head felt like it was floating. They’d landed inside the compound. Something had happened on the way in—gunfire? “Seriously, Leo,” Jason said. “You could be hurt. You shouldn’t—” Leo pushed himself to his feet. Then he saw the wreckage. Festus must have dropped the big canary cages as he came over the fence, because they’d rolled in different directions and landed on their sides, perfectly undamaged. Festus hadn’t been so lucky. The dragon had disintegrated. His limbs were scattered across the lawn. His tail hung on the fence. The main section of his body had plowed a trench twenty feet wide and fifty feet long across the mansion’s yard before breaking apart. What remained of his hide was a charred, smoking pile of scraps. Only his neck and head were somewhat intact, resting across a row of frozen rosebushes like a pillow. “No,” Leo sobbed. He ran to the dragon’s head and stroked its snout. The dragon’s eyes flickered weakly. Oil leaked out of his ear. “You can’t go,” Leo pleaded. “You’re the best thing I ever fixed.” The dragon’s head whirred its gears, as if it were purring. Jason and Piper stood next to him, but Leo kept his eyes fixed on the dragon. He remembered what Hephaestus had said: That isn’t your fault, Leo. Nothing lasts forever, not even the best machines. His dad had been trying to warn him. “It’s not fair,” he said. The dragon clicked. Long creak. Two short clicks. Creak. Creak. Almost like a pattern…triggering an old memory in Leo’s mind. Leo realized Festus was trying to say something. He was using Morse code—just like Leo’s mom had taught him years ago. Leo
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
“
I thought that you would be frozen in awe when you found the sequence, when you heard a bird's song repeating my Morse code, my cry for help, my S.O.S, when you saw the same numbers in the petals of a flower and the structure of a pine cone, when you saw with your own eyes the interconnectedness of all things.
But I was wrong.
You searched for a male god, a creator, an intelligent designer, or you banished the beauty and mystery of the world beneath the cold concrete grave of closed-eye skepticism. The few of you who could still hear my music felt tortured and misunderstood; you reached out for any conspiracy theory large enough to explain your alienated despair, your sense that the Earth was dying and no one cared.
But listen to me -- you are not alone. Run your fingers through the grass and grab it in your fists, feel my pulse echoing through your blood. You. Are. Not. Alone. And I -- I am not dead yet.
”
”
Sarah Warden (Blood of Earth (Vampires for Earth, #2))
“
No calls, no emails, no Facebook messages, no letters, no Morse code with a flashlight during the dark hours of the night, no smoke signals blown with steaming breath on a chilly autumn night, no burning thoughts so intense that they could penetrate fog and walls and doors. Nothing. Complete silence. It was as if the whole person had disappeared from the face of the earth. Or, at least, disappeared from Lumikki's life in one swift stroke. Just as unexpectedly and presumptuously as they'd come.
”
”
Salla Simukka (As Red as Blood (Lumikki Andersson, #1))
“
Some have asked whether a language can communicate complicated information with only eleven phonemes. A computer scientist knows, however, that computers can communicate anything we program them to do, and that they do this with only two “letters” — 1 and 0, which can be thought of as phonemes. Morse code also has only two “letters,” long and short.
And that is all any language needs. In fact, a language could get by with a single phoneme. In such a language words might look like a, aa, aaa, aaaa, and so on.
”
”
Daniel L. Everett (Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle)
“
Afterward Reynie and Kate went into the sitting room to practice their Morse code. Despite their urging, however, Constance crabbily refused to join them. Instead, while Sticky helped them practice, she composed a poem about a bunch of bossy gargoyles who liked to eat cat food and pick their ears. It was an unpleasant poem, and the gargoyles’ names, not very cleverly disguised, were Kateena, Reynardo, and Georgette. After reciting this to the others, Constance went straight to bed without brushing her teeth or saying good night.
”
”
Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #1))
“
There is her heart. I’ve never seen one beating. I had no idea they moved so much. You put your hand on your heart and you picture something pulsing slightly but basically still, like a hand on a desktop tapping Morse code. This thing is going wild in there. It’s a mixing-machine part, a stoat squirming in its burrow, an alien life form that’s just won a Pontiac on The Price Is Right. If you were looking for the home of the human body’s animating spirit, I could imagine believing it to be here, for the simple reason that it is the human body’s most animated organ.
”
”
Mary Roach (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers)
“
Words are useful, sir. That's from the communicating point of view. They come into their own then. When you think about it, even Morse code, which seems to be only dots and dashes, is actually dots and dashes signifying letters, and letters that go to make words. I don't know where we'd be without them. For instance, I wouldn't be able to say "I don't know where we'd be without them" if we were without them....
But for myself, I admit I find words quite handy, especially during, for instance, speech or writing. Yes, I think I'd find both of those tricky without words.
”
”
Bill James
“
However, the widths of tree growth rings vary from year to year, depending on rain or drought conditions in each year. Hence the sequence of rings in a tree cross-section is like a message in the Morse code formerly used for sending telegraph messages; dot-dot-dash-dot-dash in the Morse code, wide-wide-narrow-wide-narrow in a tree ring sequence. Actually, the ring sequence is even more diagnostic and richer in information than the Morse code, because trees actually contain rings spanning many different widths, rather than the Morse code’s choice between only a dot or a dash.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed)
“
1) The Titanic hit the iceberg in the North Atlantic, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. 2) The Titanic was considered unsinkable because she was built with huge watertight doors to contain any possible leaks. However, when the ship hit the iceberg, six watertight compartments quickly filled up with water, dooming the ship. 3) The signal SOS was chosen as an international distress call because of the simplicity of the three letters in Morse code: three dots, three dashes, and three dots. 4) No one knows for certain exactly how long the musicians played on the Titanic, but legend says they played until the ship went down, and their last song was the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” 5) More than 1,500 people perished in the Titanic disaster, while 705 people escaped in lifeboats and were eventually rescued by a ship named the Carpathia. 6) After the sinking of the Titanic, laws were changed so that every ship was required to have enough lifeboats to carryall its passengers. Also, the International Ice Patrol was formed, so that ships would have warning about ice conditions. 7) In 1985, a scientist named Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the undersea wreck of the Titanic.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
Consider this oddly neglected fact: the West was acquired, conquested, and largely consolidated into the nation coincident with the greatest breakthrough in the history of human communication. The breakthrough was the telegraph. The great advances that followed it, the telephone, radio, television, and the Internet, were all elaborations on its essential contribution. The telegraph separated the person from the message. Before it, with a few exceptions such as a sephamore and carrier pigeons, information moved only as fast as people did. By the nineteenth century, people were certainly moving a lot faster, and indeed a second revolution, that of transportation, was equally critical in creating the West, but before the telegraph a message still had to move with a person, either as a document or in somebody’s head. The telegraph liberated information. Now it could travel virtually at the speed of light. The railroad carried people and things, including letters, ten to fifteen times faster than the next most rapid form of movement. The telegraph accelerated communication more than forty million times. A single dot of Morse code traveled from Kansas City to Denver faster than the click it produced moved from the receiver to the telegrapher’s eardrum.
”
”
Elliott West (The Essential West: Collected Essays)
“
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’ . . . Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion: 10th Anniversary Edition)
“
The right and left hemispheres of our brain show differences in their gross anatomy, many of which are also found in the brains of other animals. In humans, the left hemisphere generally makes a unique contribution to language and to the performance of complex movements. Consequently, damage on this side tends to be accompanied by aphasia (impairment of spoken or written language) and apraxia (impairment of coordinated movement). People usually show a right-ear (left-hemisphere) advantage for words, digits, nonsense syllables, Morse code, difficult rhythms, and the ordering of temporal information, whereas they show a left-ear (right-hemisphere) advantage for melodies, musical chords, environmental sounds, and tones of voice.
”
”
Sam Harris (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion)
“
Sam Harris was not being overly cynical when he wrote, in The End of Faith: We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’ . . . Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. I
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion: 10th Anniversary Edition)
“
MINDY READ the Morse code aloud. “ROLLED. FIXING NOW.” “What? That’s it?” Venkat said over the phone. “That’s all he said,” she reported, cradling the phone as she typed out an e-mail to the list of interested parties. “Just three words? Nothing about his physical health? His equipment? His supplies?” “You got me,” she said. “He left a detailed status report. I just decided to lie for no reason.” “Funny,” Venkat said. “Be a smart-ass to a guy seven levels above you at your company. See how that works out.” “Oh no,” Mindy said. “I might lose my job as an interplanetary voyeur? I guess I’d have to use my master’s degree for something else.” “I remember when you were shy.” “I’m space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job.” “Yeah, yeah,” Venkat said. “Just send the e-mail.” “Already sent.
”
”
Andy Weir (The Martian)
“
Mindy read the Morse code aloud. "ROLLED. FIXING NOW."
"What? That's it?" Venkat said over the phone.
"That's all he said," she reported, cradling the phone as she typed out an e-mail list of interest parties.
"Just three words? Nothing about his physical health? His equipment? His supplies?"
"You got me," she said. "He left a detailed status report. I just decided to lie for no reason."
"Funny," Venkat said. "Be a smart-ass to a guy seven levels above you at your company. See how that works out."
"Oh no," Mindy said. "I might lose my job as an interplanetary voyeur? I guess I'd have to use my master's degree for something else."
"I remember when you were shy."
"I'm the space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job."
"Yeah, yeah," Venkat said. "Just send the e-mail."
"Already sent.
”
”
Andy Weir (The Martian)
“
The next year, Samuel F. B. Morse, a young man of many talents, best known as a painter, published a virulent treatise called Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration, urging the passage of a new immigration law banning all foreign-born Americans from voting.53 Morse then ran for mayor of New York (and lost). Meanwhile, he began devising a secret code of dots and dashes, to be used on the telegraph machine he was designing. He believed there existed a Catholic plot to take over the United States. He believed that, to defeat such a plot, the U.S. government needed a secret cipher. Eventually, he decided that a better use of his
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Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
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If you could be anyone else, who would you want to be?” I ask, because I’ve decided that I admire how David doesn’t self-censor. I should try it too.
I think about this all the time. Waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror, and seeing someone wholly different staring back. These days I’d give anything to be the old me, the pre-accident me, who could sit at my old lunch table and chat about nothing. The pre-accident me who aspired to be more like Lauren Drucker, former benevolent ruler and social chair of Mapleview. I really wouldn’t mind being entirely full of shit, so long as I didn’t notice.
“There’s this guy Trey who teaches me guitar,” David says. “He kind of pisses me off, actually, but he’s just the type of guy everyone likes. He always knows exactly what to say. Like has annoyingly pitch-perfect radio waves. So I guess him?”
“I used to want my metaphorical radio waves to play music that was, like, quirky but also perfectly curated, you know? Something cool. But now I feel like I’ve become traffic on the hour.”
“You are so not traffic on the hour,” he says, and to my dismay dabs at his chin with a napkin. “Though I wouldn’t mind even being that. Reliable, informative, albeit repetitive. At least people actually listen to it.”
“I think your signal is in Morse code,” I say with a smile.
“When I was eight, I taught myself Morse code. The clicks are highly irritating.”
I lean over and for no reason I can think of—maybe because I have nothing smart to say, maybe because with David I feel like someone else entirely, I want to be someone else entirely—I take a lick of his ice cream. The vanilla part. He stares at my lips, as shocked as I am.
“Sorry,” I say. “I liked your order better.”
“The cold medicine is not for me. Just to be clear,” he says.
“Wasn’t worried.
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Julie Buxbaum (What to Say Next)
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On a distant hilltop, twinkling like an early evening star, a white light was flashing.
Blouse lowered his telescope. ‘They're repeating "CQ",’ he said. ‘And I believe those longer pauses are when they're aiming their tube in different directions. They're looking for their spies. "Seek You", see? Private Igor?’
‘Thur?’
‘You know how that tube works, don't you?’
‘Oh, yeth, thur. You jutht light a flare in the box, and then it'th just point and click.’
‘You're not going to answer it, are you, sir?’ said Jackrum, horrified.
‘I am indeed, sergeant,’ said Blouse briskly. ‘Private Carborundum, please assemble the tube. Manickle, please bring the lantern. I shall need to read the code book.’
‘But that'll give away our position!’ said Jackrum.
‘No, sergeant, because although this term may be unfamiliar to you I intend to what we call "lie",’ said Blouse. ‘Igor, I'm sure you have some scissors, although I'd rather you didn't attempt to repeat the word.’
‘I have thome of the appliantheth you mention, thur,’ said Igorina stiffly.
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Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
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The parallels between Spiritualism and telegraphy were immediately drawn, and early publications, such as the Spiritual Telegraph, attested to this very simple analogy: just as the telegraph could send and receive over great distances, the Spiritualist could send and receive across the divide of life and death. The raps of the Fox sisters, after all, were themselves a form of Morse code. Media and medium were two sides of the same coin.
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Colin Dickey (Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places)
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Remember that culture changes the value of tools: for example, if you have a team of people who hate each other, they will make each other miserable no matter how many billions of dollars of communication technology they use. Alternatively if you have people who trust each other and have similar goals, they'll be effective with smoke signals and carrier pigeons. Wars have been won by tightly knit armies using candles and Morse code.
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Scott Berkun (The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work)
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I can't wait to leave tomorrow, all the more so because of Eric's Morse code message yesterday. It was a reminder there are places where people are normal and good. It's easy to forget that in here.
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Sarah Lyons Fleming (Instauration (The City, #3))
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The haybag is exposing me with each flick of her curled lashes. She knows, and she wants the others to know too! Each flutter is Morse code to those that surround us, each one tapping away the message - ‘Here he is! Here is the monster that slits the throats of whores and sips on their blood!
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Ilse V. Rensburg (Blood Sipper)
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Truth be told, we never actually made it to the music festival itself- our bus got a flat tire at a campground in northern Alabama. Still, the campground introduced us to snake-handling and seances which did wonders for our historical consciousness, particularly the seance in which a Confederate soldier would only communicate through kazoo notes translated into Morse Code.
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Alina Stefanescu (Every Mask I Tried On: Short Stories)
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SEND MORE BOOKS PLEASE. STOP
···/·/-·/-··//--/---/·-·/·//-···/---/---/-·-/···//·--·/·-··/·/·-/···/·/·-·-·-//···/-/---/·--·//
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Kim Krogh
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Chance likes to ride in back, standing up at red lights and pounding on the roof in (what he insists is) Morse code. We won't mention that to Dad.
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Kelley York (Made of Stars)
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What Gottman is saying is that a relationship between two people has a fist as well: a distinctive signature that arises naturally and automatically. That is why a marriage can be read and decoded so easily, because some key part of human activity — whether it is something as simple as pounding out a Morse code message or as complex as being married to someone — has an identifiable and stable pattern. Predicting divorce, like tracking Morse code operators, is pattern recognition.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
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Over nineteenth-century telegraph wires OK would have been sent in the original Morse code, also known as American Morse or Railroad Morse, in the pattern dot-gap-dot dash-dot-dash, rather than dash-dash-dash dash-dot-dash of today’s International Morse Code. The O was signaled by two dots with a long intracharacter gap to distinguish it from I, which used two dots with a short intracharacter gap.
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Allan A. Metcalf (OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word)
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The Crime is written on the black Morse I just had typed.
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Petra Hermans
Barbara Cartland (Love Runs in)
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Batty ran up, her hands cupped together. “I caught one named Horatio,” she said, and spread open her hands. A lightning bug balanced uncertainly on her thumb.
“Look, he’s blinking,” said Jane. “He’s trying to tell us something in Morse code.”
“What?” asked Batty.
“Please... let... me... go,” said Jane.
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Jeanne Birdsall (The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (The Penderwicks, #1))
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I’ve found the same results at numerous organizations. At a senior leadership event at JPMorgan Chase, CEO Jamie Dimon predicted that the executive sitting next to him would have a 100 percent chance of guessing it. He turned out to be right—but most of the time, we’re overconfident in our predictions. Why? It’s humanly impossible to tap out the rhythm of a song without hearing the tune in your head. That makes it impossible to imagine what your disjointed knocks sound like to an audience that is not hearing the accompanying tune. As Chip and Dan Heath write in Made to Stick, “The listeners can’t hear that tune—all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code.
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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The single drop of pee made a pitiful splash. Fred sighed as he stood over the cracked toilet bowl that, like him, had seen better days. The public restrooms at Wattle River Reserve weren’t as dirty as he’d feared, though the walls hosted a colorful array of aging graffiti. Another couple of measly drips. Was there a job in the armed forces for people who could urinate in Morse code? If so, he’d be an ideal candidate, though it was unlikely they’d accept eighty-two-year-olds.
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Anna Johnston (The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife)
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In the same way that Morse code reduces written language to dots and dashes, the spoken version of the code reduces speech to just two vowel sounds. The key word here is two. Two types of blinks, two vowel sounds, two different anything, really, can with suitable combinations convey all types of information.
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Charles Petzold (Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software)
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Just as Morse code provides a good introduction to the nature of codes, the telegraph provides a good introduction to the hardware of the computer.
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Charles Petzold (Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software)
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Morse code had been devised by 1838. In this code, letters of the alphabet are represented by spaces, dots, and dashes. The space is the absence of an electric current, the dot is an electric current of short duration, and the dash is an electric current of longer duration.
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John Robinson Pierce (An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (Dover Books on Mathematics))
Juliana Foster (The Girls' Book: How To Be The Best At Everything)
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Nora had worked as a telegraphist at the Taunton Post Office and learned Morse code from her mother-in-law, accumulating valuable experience on the two common telegraphic instruments: the single needle and the
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Neil McAleer (Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary)
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I was walking home one night and a guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo. In morse code.
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Emo Phillips
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Amid great anticipation, Giacomo slowly lowered the electrode into the callosum. As is commonly done in neurophysiology, the recording system was hooked up to a loudspeaker so that the rat-tat-tat of the neurons firing could be heard. We were ready to hear the Morse code of the brain.
Then it happened. The electrode pierced the callosum. Instead of the rat-tat-tat we expected, the loudspeaker boomed with the excruciatingly clear voice of Ringo Starr singing, “We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.” Giacomo looked up from the cat and calmly said, “Now that is what I call high-order information.” Some kind of electronic ground loop had been closed, and we were picking up the local radio station. We all laughed, though we knew this brain code thing was going to be a long haul.
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Michael S. Gazzaniga (Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience)
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My heartbeat’s so loud it’s like a tap dancer in my chest. No, it’s more like Mr. Morse, tapping out the code of love.
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Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
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his own willingness to practice Morse code “about 18 hours a day.” (Edison’s capacity for extended bursts of work would be his principal vanity his entire life.) This intensive tutelage soon enabled him to become a professional telegraph operator.
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Randall E. Stross (The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World)
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In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as “Happy Birthday to You” and “The StarSpangled Banner.” Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped.
Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120.
But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why?
When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head. Go ahead and try it for yourself — tap out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It’s impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that tune — all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code.
In the experiment, tappers are flabbergasted at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. Isn’t the song obvious? The tappers’ expressions, when a listener guesses “Happy Birthday to You” for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” are priceless: How could you be so stupid?
It’s hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. When they’re tapping, they can’t imagine what it’s like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.
The tapper/listener experiment is reenacted every day across the world. The tappers and listeners are CEOs and frontline employees, teachers and students, politicians and voters, marketers and customers, writers and readers. All of these Groups rely on ongoing communication, but, like the tappers and listeners, they suffer from enormous information imbalances. When a CEO discusses “unlocking shareholder value,” there is a tune playing in her head that the employees can’t hear.
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Chip Heath
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The endgame is this: Without absence in our lives, we risk fooling ourselves into believing that things (a message from a lover, the performance of a song, the face of a human body) matter less. De Beers hoards its diamonds to invent a scarcity that equals preciousness. Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that’s lacking breaks—a swarm of noise blanketing the valuable data beneath.
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Michael Harris (The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection)
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Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that's lacking breaks - a swarm of noise blanketing the valuable data beneath.
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Michael Harris
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A cheap, utilitarian clock hung on the wall; its secondhand clicked inconsistently—slow, fast, fast, slow—as if it were spitting out Morse code.
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Anonymous
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During the Second World War, the British Broadcasting Corporation prefaced some radio broadcasts with the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony — BAH, BAH, BAH, BAHMMMMM — which Ludwig didn't know at the time he composed the music is the Morse code V, for Victory.
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Anonymous
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Are you nuts? He wants you to claim him, Emma. Men need that. Be proud he's yours. If I was with Cole, I'd be wearing a t-shirt with his picture on it while tap dancing his name in Morse code.
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Brenda Rothert (Now and Then (Now, #1))
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It is fitting that history attached Morse’s name to his code, more than to his device.
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James Gleick (The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood)
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Don’t get excited. It was a HAM signal, which means it was local to the area. Not sure where from but somewhere up high, maybe. This tells me likely north because according to the maps I seen of the area the north slopes up more than the south. Then again, who knows?”
“Was anything actually said?” asked Derek.
“No, but it clicked on and then off in a distinctive pattern. I wrote down the pattern and ran it through my knowledge of Morse Code,” he handed it over to Derek, and then Derek handed it to Karen.
“Oh my God,” breathed Karen.
“What is it?” asked Sheridan.
“My Dad’s address… his home address… and his cell number for work,” answered Karen.
“Of all the daft things,” mused Terrence. “Is it him or someone looking for him?”
Derek groaned and leaned back in his chair. “If it’s him, I’m glad that I headed back here. The trip to Garson would have been a gigantic waste… but if it’s someone looking for him then we definitely know where he is.”
“Do we risk it?” asked Marissa.
“Yes. In this area… other than here… where would Garrett be?” asked Derek.
“Wait, did you say Garrett?” asked Francis. “Last name wouldn’t also be Wither, would it?”
They looked over at Francis. “Yeah, why?” asked Derek.
“Right before everything went silent we granted a travel pass for one Garrett Wither so he could head up to High Falls,” replied Francis. “I was the last one to sign off on it.
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Kristan Cannon (The Last Iron Horse (The Kingdom of Walden Series, #2))
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(The code became known as the dot-and-dash alphabet, but the unmentioned space remained just as important; Morse code was not a binary language.*) That
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James Gleick (The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood)
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French listening posts learned to recognize a radio operator’s fist. Once encrypted, a message is sent in Morse code, as a series of dots and dashes, and each operator can be identified by his pauses, the speed of transmission, and the relative lengths of dots and dashes. A fist is the equivalent of a recognizable style of handwriting.
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Simon Singh (The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography)
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You’re twelve years old. One horrible day your best friend’s family moves to another town. You speak to your friend on the telephone now and then, but telephone conversations just aren’t the same as those late-night sessions with the flashlights blinking out Morse code. Your second-best friend, who lives in the house next door to yours, eventually becomes your new best friend. It’s time to teach your new best friend some Morse code and get the late-night flashlights blinking again.
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Charles Petzold (Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software)
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She had a small bit of knowledge of Morse code from her early days as a pilot, but she was on the tail end of the generation that was required to have some proficiency in it.
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James Hunt (Surviving the Collapse: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 2)
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Predicting divorce, like tracking Morse Code operators, is pattern recognition.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
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Samuel Morse, the man for whom the Morse Code was named, was convinced immigrants were destroying America. “A conspiracy exists … its plans are already in operation,” he wrote. “The serpent has already commenced his coil about our limbs, and the lethargy of his poison is creeping over us … We must awake, or we are lost.
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Kliph Nesteroff (Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars)