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New blog notes: Rosetta stone

July 20, 2006 by Scott Rosenberg

In moving the blog over I learned that I’ve written a little over one thousand posts in four years. At 250 a year that puts me averaging one per weekday. In truth, I have had spasms of more vigorous blogging and, particularly during my book leave, periods of radio silence. Still, that’s a useful stat.

The header graphic is a chunk of the old Rosetta Stone. (Turned on its side for, uh, aesthetic reasons: if you slice it horizontally to suit a blog header and you don’t turn it on its side, you only get rows of hieroglyphics, *or* rows of demotic Egyptian, *or* rows of Greek, without the cross-language effect, and that’s no fun.)

I’ve always seen myself as someone whose work translates complex concepts and ideas across various divides. When I wrote theater criticism I aimed to explain the most interesting and ambitious work I encountered for intelligent readers who weren’t necessarily steeped in theater history or the contemporary arts; when I moved on to writing about technology I trie d to immerse myself in the digital world but send back reports that readers back on land could make sense of. So the Rosetta Stone — symbol of translation-breakthroughs across tribes and times — feels right. (I liked the look, too.)

Here’s a Rosetta Stone for code: “Hello World” programs in nearly 200 programming languages.

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