At a time when the machine was fast becoming the dominant icon of the age, many thinkers saw this wondrous new mechanism as the most elegant way of seeing human endeavour. Inspired by the machines that were beginning to populate the world, from fairground automata to the elaborate clocks decorating churches, they claimed that life could be explained by the same processes of physics and chemistry.

One of the leaders of this movement was the philosopher Rene Descartes. As well as coining one of the world's most T-shirtable slogans, he tried to bring the new mechanistic perspective to bear on the mind/body issue.

Cut to the present, and the Sabres have no trouble throwing millions at a player like Vaclav Varada, a decent talent, but not exactly T-shirt-able. Then again, who on the Sabres really is?

There is a bunkerlike unit made for viewing next to a glazed administrative office complex alongside a restaurant perched on a high wall next to the oversized, swooping torqued plane of the roof atop the giant I max theater. As for the cone in the center of the complex, which sits above a crater and is composed of two mutually enfolding, tilted arcs about 30 meters high, it should serve as the most T-shirt-able branding device in recent memory.