Russel Wright brought modern design to the masses with flowing styles that are still fresh today. With his wife, Mary, Wright pioneered the concept of an entire lifestyle marketed via the Russel Wright brand. Martha Stewart’s branded empire pales in comparison, after all, she is no designer, but a shrewd tactician who merely passes her tastes along to the public. Wright’s designs appealed to the changed post-depression lifestyle and tracked perfectly with the more minimalist tastes of the post-war years. The Cooper-Hewitt Museum is running a retrospective of his work. And if you don’t want to shell out collector’s prices for the originals, Oneida is releasing updated versions of popular pieces from his dinnerware collection. An added plus, these reissues are microwavable and oven and dishwasher safe.

Ever wonder where those Oscar statuettes come from? Not from a rare hidden tree in the Hollywood Hills. R.S. Owens & Company casts, electroplates, and buffs each 8.5 pound Oscar. They also make the Emmy and the MTV Video Music Award. Encore Awards makes the Golden Globe Award.

A NY Times article reports that Chinese-language newspapers in America have recently been switching from up-down printing to left-right. This also means that what used to be the front page is now the back. Immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong were accustomed to the vertical positioning and also traditional characters. Communist China uses simplified characters and horizontal printing. The switch therefore, has an unintentional political overtone to it. Recent immigrants from mainland China are more likely to pick up a paper in left-right style. The publishers state that printing English terms is easier that way, and they are, after all, American newspapers. As can be expected, readers from different backgrounds have different reactions. One man states that children will be more inclined to learn Chinese if the paper is left-right, since it makes it easier for them. The article also mentions that most Chinese language websites use horizontal orientation as did many of the papers’ ads. It’s a strange experience to have the format of your reading material drastically altered. The fact that it also brings up cultural evolution and political divisions makes it a poignant one as well.

Amanda Hesser continues to garner attention from her fellow journalists as the Boston Phoenix jumps on the bandwagon with a feature article. It covers a few of the controversial aspects of her rise to fame such as the criticism that her “Food Diary” column is too much about her life, not enough about food. But her writing makes the topic accessible, as she says “I’d like to reach some people who don’t normally read about food.” The article also takes a slight dig at the NY Times itself: “And as the New York Times reportedly seeks a more populist readership — as evidenced by recent articles on Botox and Mariah Carey on the paper’s front page — it’s no surprise that Hesser has received such a prominent platform for her work.”

I stumbled across a nicely done guide to Mountain View, CA. Not only does it have current information, it also has has a great historical perspective on the city that I’ve spent much of my working life in. On this page is a photo from the construction of Mountain Bay Plaza. This is the tallest building in Mountain View and for many miles around. I worked on the 7th floor for a few years. I had been told that it was designed to withstand earthquakes because the building was hung off of the top of its two shafts. A cafe that used to be on the ground floor had photos from the construction, so I was able to see how it was built. But my husband, who coincidentally worked in the same building for a different company (we did not know each other back then), had never seen photos of the construction, though I had told him how the building dangled off the top. He was really surprised when I showed him the photo. The building sways viciously during an earthquake, and that’s a good thing.

I often heard people refer to Mountain Bay Plaza as “The Dog Building”, and the origin of that is chronicled in the text under the photo, except the term used there is “Dog City”. The building remained vacant as it was completed during a recession. The owner put some dogs in the ground floor for protection and they would jump and bark at people going by. Sometimes the tale was exaggerated to claim that there were wolves loose in the building. Downtown Mountain View is still changing these days, with new construction, as usual, started in the boom and ending in a recession. The city planners are trying to maintain their downtown’s character with very specific plans for the future.

My earlier mention of the closing of Impromptu Gourmet and opening of FiveLeaf generated more reader interest than I anticipated. Readers contributed the following meal delivery services: Dining By Design will deliver healthy meals, designed by nutritionists. They offer meals for restricted diets and popular diet plans. bibikitchen (warning, loud music from Flash animation) ships all-vegetarian Indian dishes via FedEx. Main dishes such as chana masala and vegetable kofta come with basmati rice you cook yourself or near-Eastern bread.

Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS) is holding their annual Petchitecture benefit this Friday. Bay Area architects design fanciful pet abodes which are auctioned off. Pet owners can also pay to be paired off with an architect who will design a custom house for their pooch, feline, fish, fowl, etc.

Did you know the U.S. had an official National Atlas? I didn’t, nor did Mike of Larkfarm from whom I swiped it. There’s a varied mix of maps in different formats. You can view Shockwave maps that track active volcanoes, the West Nile virus, and avian cholera. There is a printable map of Presidential Election results, 1789-2000. Enjoy the educational browsing.

Here’s another news item on the fun phenomenon of synesthesia. The results of a study done on a man, W.O., who sees colors when he reads and hears words (even when they are in a different language!) have been published (abstract here) and Wired News wrote a piece on it. The researcher, Thomas Palmeri of Vanderbilt University, verified that the subject was able to consistently associate the same colors for words or parts of words. Numbers took on different colors when they were written out instead of represented as numerals. “An image of the number 5 made up of much smaller number 2s, W.O. saw the whole image as a five and it appeared green” … “when he looked at the small 2s that made up the image, each of the numerals was orange.” It is fascinating to consider the richer experience W.O. has when reading the same things I do.

The European Commission is planning a standard sizing system for clothes which would use centimeters instead of the various dress sizes that are currently in place. There are four different dress size systems used in Europe, and all are different from what is used in the U.S. Member countries will conduct national size surveys so that the new measurements will match the population. Size UK has measured 11,000 U.K. residents. Their study utilized high-tech 3D body scans and the old-fashioned tape measure to track 130 separate measurements for each participant.