"Target apologizes for any discomfort," said a spokesman for the discount chain, "that may

have been caused by the baseball caps and shorts carrying the insignia '88'." He explained that it was not the company's intent to promote hate.

Since when does 88 mean "hate"？ It turns out that some neo-Nazis have discovered that the eighth letter of the alphabet is "h", and to them the number 88 is an oh-sosecret coded symbol for "heil Hitler".

The Boston Herald recalled the days of dot-and-dash telegraphy, with its two-digit codes for common phrases, and observed that "on CB and ham radio, and at the bottom of an odd e-mail, you still run across '88'—'love and kisses', which no gallant will dare use anymore to pique the interest of the YLs (young ladies) for fear they'll think he is a bug-eyed, swastika—tattooed nutcake"

Fans of Chet Gould's "Dick Tracy" strip of the 1950's will remember a piano-playing cartoon character with the musical name "88 Keys", played by Mandy Patinkin in the 1990 movie version. It comes from the number of keys on a piano keyboard, and its symbol can be the opposite of hatred: "Some of those 88 keys are white, and some black," notes Larry Horn of Yale University, "all playing together in peaceful harmony-and each set pretty boring on its own. Makes you wonder."

This latest superstition imposed on a number, and its panicky effect on merchants, is nothing new. It's a variant of 311, throe references to the 11th letter, k, for the Ku Klux Klan. (Manufacturers who may have inadvertently turned out baseball caps with that number on it will now turn white as a sheet.)

Before that, 666 was a hot number for the nervous. In the New Testament's Revelation 13: 9-18, the Apostle John recalls a vision of a boast that was an opponent of Christ: "Count the number of the beast," goes the King James Version, "for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six."

Extrapolating this into a name is an example of gematria, an ancient numbers game that assigns each letter of the alphabet a numerical value. Some scholars point out that the verse characterizes, but does not name, the beast-which aren't Satan.

Numbers are not letters. Hate groups and concerned cabals do not own the numbers, which can be used to stand for anything. So wear 88 all you like, and if you have nightmares about 666, as soda jerks used to say I'm 86 on the mail.

According to the passage, why does 88 mean "hate"？

A．Because the baseball caps and shorts carry the insignia "88".

B．Because some neoNazis have discovered that.

C．Because the number 88 is an oh-so-secret coded symbol

D．Because the eighth letter of the alphabet is "h", a secret ceded symbol for "heil Hitler".