Hana Mochi and Re:Standard
The first issue carried the cover story “A Life With Thermos Flasks”. A Thermos flask is a simple, normal item, but it can suggest something extraordinary; a field trip with friends during which a magical moment arrives, a moment in which — in the middle of nowhere, perhaps — one is refreshed by hot tea.

and…

“With your head and your instinct,” say the editors of Re:Standard, “you should judge what you really need. The standard things in our daily lives, we would like to translate as futsu — normal things. This is a magazine in which we think about normal things — futsu — and necessary things, neither too old nor to new. These things — abandoned in the rush for progress — can become our new standards.”
(Via Click opera)

What are the themes for 2009? What do we need? What is happiness? Can happiness be bought, or is it earned? Is it a thing or an attitude? To have or to be. And, how can I be useful?

Here is some good reading for New Year’s Day:

The World Question Center 2009
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
“What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”
(Via The Technium)

Stuart Kauffman:
The biosphere is rife with mutualisms. In biologist Scott Gilbert’s fine phrase, these are codependent origination—an ancient Buddhist phrase. In this open universe, beyond entailment by fundamental physics, we have partial lawlessness, ceaseless creativity, and forever co-dependent origination that changes the Actual and the ever new Adjacent Possible we ceaselessly self-consistently co-construct. More, the way this unfolds is neither fully lawful, nor is it random. We need to re-envision ourselves and the universe.

Neither fully lawful, nor random…
And everything that happens contains a seed of opportunity. I think 2009 could turn out to be a fine seed.

Here’s to Twothousandnine

Today’s the day where you get to make a wish that comes true. Use that responsibility wisely.

(Via DesignNotes by Michael Surtees)

This year I want to learn Spanish. I made a list that included Mandarin, Japanese, French and Italian, but Spanish won. I want to use the bike as my main medium of transportation. In the last two years I put less than 6,700 miles total on my car and I would like to add less than 3,000 miles to that tally in 2009. And, I ordered a Concert Zither – don’t ask, it’s something I heard in my head while I was in Germany in November.