When I was in my teens, I wanted to become an architect. I read books about architecture, and one of my favorite pastimes was trying to tell the architectural style of any buildings I saw. I did that in my native city of Odessa, Ukraine and on the trips to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. For a while I really favored the Gothic style. I really liked the soaring feeling of gothic churches. But then I've seen a rather plain building with rounded, yet also soaring shapes. The only decoration on the building were relief plaques. The building was rather old, yet depicted on the plaques were an airplane, a light bulb, a telegraph key and I think a radio. My dad explained to me about Art Deco style.

Here, in America, I learned about different art movements of the beginning of the century. It gets pretty complicated. There is Art Deco, Art Modern, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts and Shaker style. Why I like these styles? Well, it's because I think that they have just the right proportion of beauty and utility. This is a sort of a mental cheat sheet that I have (embellished with links, of course):

Shaker Style: Shakers are a now mostly extinct religious sect. In fact they are a splinter of the Quaker movement, and were called shaking Quakers because their praying during which they shook. I can't distinguish Shaker Style from Arts and Crafts, and indeed they are very similar. Genuine Shaker items are very expensive, but these days many manufacturers make shaker style furniture and kitchen cabinets. Although great designers and craftsmen, there are very few Shakers remaining. I bet it's all because they are supposed to be celibate.

Arts and Crafts: Started in Great Britain. A bunch of designers and architects were pissed off by the poor quality and gaudiness of early mass produced things. Their motto was something to the tune of "turn artists into craftsmen and craftsmen into artists". Simple bordering on austere designs, natural materials, muted colors, handmade look. The radically new idea was to take away most of decoration, but at the same time turn structural elements into decorations. Instead of hiding beams, supports, joins and other elements of construction, the designers would instead show them off. The solidity, strength are considered virtues. The proportions are usually more down to earth, not meant to dwarf a person. Think Frank Lloyd Wright and Newcomb College Pottery. Basically heavy duty, expensive hand made crap for rich people with good taste.

Art Nouveau: Started in France. The name is derived from the name of some gallery or exhibition or something like that. The idea was to create a whole new style for the new century. Just to be different. The designs are organic (meaning that things looked as if they were grown, not built), proportions - elongated. Not a single sharp edge to be seen. Think Aubrey Beardsley, Tiffany (who names their son Louis Comfort?), Gaudi and what he did in Barcelona. I would also call H.R. Ggiger's stuff modern Art Nouveau, although I don't know if that's correct. In general a style for eccentric rich people.

Art Deco: Very similar to Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau. The major difference is that instead of making things look hand made, the fact that things are made by machines now is celebrated. Elements of the design are very industrial, proportions - soaring. There is a wide variety in colors used - sometimes they are muted, even dark, sometimes - absolutely outrageous. Shining stainless steel is not out of place, and neither is polished black lacquer. Think Chrysler Building, Empire State Building and other New York skyscrapers, early Polaroid cameras, bakelite rotary phones (in fact anything made out of bakelite), cathedral radios, turn of the century cars.

The thing is, Art Deco is easily corrupted. There is a style that is sometimes derogatively referred to as "Bronx Modern" or "Flatbush Renaissance". Gaudy, ugly stuff. Like much of Italian furniture sold in Brooklyn. Or like Joey Tribbiani's apartment in "Friends". Such perverted Art Deco is rather common. Do not confuse it with true, beautiful Art Deco.

I always liked the concept of branding. There is something very noble in putting your mark on something you created. If programmers were always required to put their name and contact information as a comment in every piece of code they wrote, maybe there would be less bad code. People usually are embarrassed to put their brand on something inferior. And if not, at least the end users would know whose abomination they are dealing with. There is a bank near where I live. It's called Roslyn. That's a weird name, right? Ok, I thought. Maybe that's the name of the founder. The rose on the logo is because of "ros" in the name. Heart? That's something the graphic designer put into it. But then, during the remodel of the building I noticed the original name plaque which was visible for a short period of time. And it turned out that the name of the bank probably occurred kind of like the "fishbulb" Mr. Sparkle from that Simpsons episode.

 Announcer: [in English] Mr. Sparkle. A joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks [a smiling fish appears on the left half of the screen] and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern [a light bulb appears on the right half of the screen. The two logos meld to form -- Mr. Sparkle!] The bank near me used to be called Roosevelt Bank. And then it merged with Lincoln Bank.

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I might be wrong about this though. It's just that I've also seen a Lincoln bank in Brooklyn that became Roslyn. I am also not sure which Roosevelt this was, Teddy or FDR. Anyway, moving on. I noticed for the fist time the special "nibbled" letter "O" in Microsoft's logo when I was on Microsoft's campus. At first I thought that it was just a "bug" - maybe the logo manufacturer missed a small piece :). In the cafeteria that was near the artificial waterfall I had a burger called "the blibbet burger". I only learned what that was much, much later. Apparently the old MS logo featured a funky letter "O" which was called "the blibbet". In 1982 the new, much more subtle logo was introduced. The programmers were already mightily pissed by marketing people which were starting to play a much more important role and this was the last drop -- a huge "Save The Blibbet" campaign swept the campus. I dug this up at uspto.gov: I am still pissed off that I didn't see Lake Bill (check out this awesome 3d view) and the Microsoft museum. And our handlers didn't have any extra coupons for the Microsoft company store. Maybe next time. Now Starbucks. It took me a while to realize that the woman on the *$ logo is a mermaid. You see, I was used to a regular, single tailed variety. But apparently the one on the logo is a two tailed mermaid (or a siren) referred to as Melusine. I've read about it in some book about symbolism that I purchased at Barnes&Noble. Apparently the two tails have something to do with the Melusine's ability to have sex with sailors, and being a sexual symbol. Think about it. I bet the whole thing with spread legs/tails on the logo is what caused the later redesign of the logo, on which you can only see the upper part of the Starbucks siren. The old logo is usually referred to as the "bellybutton logo" because you can see the siren's bellybutton. Items with the old logo are pretty hard to come by.

In fact, the first logo wasn't even green, it was brown. But I'll write more about Starbucks later. More? You want more? Well, I wrote about the three versions of NASA logo, the Worm , the Vector and The Meatball here.

It's well known that Disney is well known for popularizing certain animals. It actually benefits some of these animals, as for instance many kids would not let their fathers hunt "Bambi". But if there is a potential for the animal to become a pet, then it's a different story.

My wife told me that there was a huge demand for spotted dogs after "1001 Dalmatians" hit the big screen. And apparently Dalmatians are not low maintenance pets. So after a while there was a whole surplus of abandoned Dalmatians in dog shelters.

And now requests for the "Finding Nemo fish" are driving a pet store employee posting in nuts. Remember, saltwater fish are a maintenance nightmare (as the owners of the Amazing Netscape Fishcam which was once near the Tent of Doom would definitely tell you).

In any case, there will me a massive number of clown fish deaths in the following months. This is doubly ironic because in the cartoon the fish wants to escape from an aquarium.