So I whipped out the video camera and here are the results. Based on research and visits, I believe the five sites captured here represent the best green roofs in New York, and by “best” I mean I the most unique, diverse and beautiful. If there is a fabulous planted roof in New York that I missed, or another unforgettable spot elsewhere in the country that deserves attention, please let me know in the comments.

Video: Best Green Roofs in New York is a post from: The Ferris Files

So far, the movie has had three screenings: Once in March at the DC Environmental Film Festival, once as part of the “Green Screen” series put on by the Washington Film Institute,  and yesterday’s well-attended showing. Each took place at the Goethe Institut.

Since that first showing there has been significant interest in showing at in other, non-German venues, according to Robert Robinson, an activist with DC Sun, which sponsored yesterday’s showing.  (The film has English subtitles.) He said the Carbon War Room, the German Embassy, and the Solar Energy Industries Association have all wanted to screen it and spread the word. But so far the German producers have said nein.

Why the reluctance to put a film in front of such influential people? I sent an email to the production company that made the film, Fechner Media, but have not yet received a response. I’ll do an update if I get any other information.

In the meantime, enjoy the trailer.

The Inspiring Energy Film that Washingtonians Can’t See is a post from: The Ferris Files

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The love affair started with a Mac much like this one.

When Steve Jobs announced last week that he is leaving Apple, I felt a stab of grief. Part of it is the sadness we all feel, losing the visionary who pulled marvelous rabbits out of the drab beige box of computing, and part of it is personal. My relationship with Steve and his creations goes all the way back to high school.

Steve Jobs and his co-founder at Apple, Steve Wozniak, both attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. Fifteen years later, so did I. Their names were first mentioned in the newsroom of The Epitaph, our school paper, because the two entrepreneurs had given us a computer. It sat in a closet and at first no one touched it. After all, we were busy assembling the paper by hand — cutting out the headlines, bylines, and text of stories with X-Acto knives, arranging them on boards of plywood with rulers, and affixing everything in place with wax rollers. Who had time for a computer?

But this nerdy guy on staff, Eric Ly, hunched over the glowing screen playing around with a program called PageMaker. After a little practice, he could complete a page in a fraction of the time that we could, and by the end of the year every page was being assembled by Eric and churned out on our snazzy new laser printer. Steve Jobs had shanghaied us into doing some of the world’s first desktop publishing.

Steve's first appearance on the cover of Time. Source: mac-history.net

About the same time my family replaced its electric typewriter with a Mac Plus. (Imagine, one computing device for a whole family.) We got our mouths around terms like “font” and “dropdown menu.” We learned that a “mouse” signified something other than a rodent and an “icon” something other than a person. One night I was finishing a big term paper for English class when I was visited by the dreaded “bomb” icon. The computer crashed and I had to suffer through an all-nighter to rewrite the paper. I’ve almost forgiven you for that, Steve.

When I went away to college I brought along a Mac II and covered it with In-n-Out and “Dukakis for President” stickers. I loved that machine. Many years later, after floppy disks had long since flopped, I reluctantly brought it to a computer recycling center in San Rafael. The recycling guy, a tower of junked electronics piled up behind him, turned my Mac in his hands and regarded it affectionately. “Aw, it’s so cute,” he said. “Are you sure you want to get rid of it?”

I put it back in the car. He was right, it was too cute to get rid of.

Then came the onslaught of the “i” products: iMac, iTunes, iPod, iTouch, iPhone, iPad, each more sleek and impressive than the last. Steve had cracked the code and made computing fun for the masses. Steve himself became the icon, donning the jeans and mock black turtleneck that made him as spare and instantly recognizable as his gadgets. The hits were wondrous indeed — but at the same time they elicited in me just the tiniest of shrugs.

They felt like candy, these new toys. We the Mac faithful had learned the beauty of Apple’s devices in the 1980s and clung on through the dark 1990s, during Steve’s exile from Apple and during those years when the PC crowd was seized by a puzzling excitement about Windows. And now the world was clamoring for the Steve aesthetic and the new converts lined up outside the Apple stores like children, children who needed to be entreated with something small and shiny.

Steve's latest appearance on the cover of Time. Credit: mac-history.net

But I should get off my high horse because I am as seduced by an iPhone as anyone else. I cradle its smooth shell in my palm like a toy. There are many machines and gadgets I use every day, but none of them emerge from a singular vision like those from Apple. None have the staying power, or have created a fraction of the enjoyment, as the machines that Steve has been dreaming up for thirty years now. Thank you for all you’ve created for us, Steve. You may have graduated, but we hope you’ll come to visit for many years to come.

Steve Jobs, a Tribute is a post from: The Ferris Files

Photo Credit: New York Times

On Friday, the Huffington Post published my story about DC Biofuels and its plan to create the first urban biodiesel plant on the East Coast. In short, DC Biofuels wants to take the used cooking oil from Washington, D.C.’s restaurants and make it into something truly valuable: biodiesel to fuel trucks and buses. I learned about it last week at a brown-bag lunch hosted by the DC Environmental Network, and left wondering if smelly old grease is on its way to becoming a valuable commodity.

Used vegetable oil is a messy material that restaurants long haven’t known what to do with; if poured down the drain it gums up the sewer, and traditionally the restaurant has paid to haul it away. Restaurants that make greasy fare, like fast-food restaurants and Chinese joints, can produce dozens of gallons of it a week.

These days, a proliferating number of enterprises will take a restaurant’s greasy leavings for free and try to make some money off it. In the D.C. area, the suitors include Greenlight Biofuels, Smarter Fuel and the American Renewable Fuel Institute. Another operator is Valley Proteins, which mostly converts old oil into animal feed. (If readers know of others, please mention them in the comments.)

Participants in the DC Environmental Network event groused that Valley Proteins isn’t a worthy recipient of played-out cooking oil because the company is using it for something other than fuel.

None of these enterprises have to pay for the leftover grease — yet. But as they get more established, how long will it be before the restaurants realize they could make a few bucks by selling it?

That would truly be a sign of our resource-constrained times.

Note: Thanks to reader feedback, this post has been modified from its original version.

The Coming Turf Battle for D.C.’s Grease is a post from: The Ferris Files

Stephen Chu

America is at a “Sputnik moment,” Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said today, and the government’s next moves will determine whether the country leads the global clean-tech race or loses it to China.

“This is the threat that I see,” Chu said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “The U.S. still has the opportunity to lead in a new industrial revolution. It is a way to secure our future prosperity, but I believe our time is running out.”

I attended Chu’s presentation and feel I witnessed a historic moment: Many in the cleantech field have been waiting for the Obama administration to invoke the space race as an analogy for the cleantech race. The two races share a sense of mission, aspiration and patriotism. The words really ought to have come from the lips of Obama himself in an Oval Office address, but I gather that the budget crisis and all those victorious Republicans are making the president a little shy in his proclamations.

The timing of the speech was no accident. It came as new global climate talks got underway in Mexico and as President Obama prepares to sit down for talks with the new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.

When the U.S.S.R. launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, it shook the American industrial and military establishment; few knew the Russians were capable of such a feat. Eleven days afterward, President Dwight Eisenhower announced a new commitment to scientific R&D that led to decades of American technological dominance.

That today’s announcement was made by a cabinet secretary and not Obama just begins to state the differences between 1957 and 2010. Eisenhower faced a clear enemy at an emphatic historical moment. He wasn’t saddled with a $13.7 trillion national debt or an opposing political party whose top priority was denying him another term in office.

To fend off likely Republican opposition, Chu steered away from divisive issues like climate change and instead turned his attention to the threat from China. He cited figures from a report about China’s rising scientific prowess, designed to scare even the most angry and penny-pinching Tea Party congressman.

In the last 15 years, Chu said, China has gone from 15th place to 5th in international patents and from 14th place to 2nd place in published research articles. Of fifty or so nuclear reactors under construction around the world, thirty are in China. China just surpassed the U.S. with the world’s fastest supercomputer, has a 220-mph rail line that is the fastest in the world, and has broken ground on a rail network almost four times larger than the next most developed rail country, France. The U.S. is just sketching out its plan for high-speed rail.

Furthermore, Chu cited figures that eight of the ten global companies with the largest R&D budgets have set up research facilities in China and/or India. And then there’s the fact that U.S. tech giant Applied Materials has built the world’s largest private research facility — in China.

Chu remained upbeat that the U.S. could win the energy race by building on investments the Obama adminstration has made so far, notably through the Energy Department’s ARPA-E program that gives seed funding to promising energy technologies. ARPA-E has set ambitious targets, like a car battery that can go 500 miles on a single charge, synthesizing fuels from sunlight, and reducing the cost of photovoltaic solar by a factor of four, so it can compete with coal.

“Let’s seize this opportunity,” Chu said. “We can’t afford not to.”

Chu: Will America Miss Its “Sputnik Moment” on Energy? is a post from: The Ferris Files

On one hand, solar, biomass, new vehicle technology and the smart grid all receive a boost of hundreds of millions of dollars under Obama’s plan. On the other, the president again suggested ending $36.5 billion in subsidies for oil and gas. Lest coal states and Republicans get too exercised, he also committed $545 million to carbon-capture technology and a whopping $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants, a move that drew howlsin some quarters.

Combined with a generous investment in biofuels, especially advanced ones, it appears the president is preparing to to herd resurgent Republicans and reluctant Democrats toward an energy bill this year.

Meanwhile, three of the West’s largest cities looked global warming in the eye and unslung their caulking guns. Seattle passed a law that requires large buildings report their energy use, San Francisco
invested $19 million in greener interiors, and Los Angeles took a step towardcollecting rainwater from its vast acreage of roofs.

A New York Times story detailed how thoroughly China is dominating the race toward renewables while the U.S. dithers. But the rising tide can cross the Pacific, as American Superconductors demonstrated when it
won a $70 million contract to provide wind-turbine control systems to Shenyang Blower Works.

Hybrid cars ended the week with soot on their faces as an authoritative study concluded that some hybrid models don’t save much gas and are loaded with too many expensive features. On Thursday, Toyota admitted that the 2010 Prius has a
braking problem linked to regenerative braking.

European sportscar makers fell over themselves announcing (or at least suggesting) models that could hug the road and hug a tree at the same time. BMW expects a plug-in hybrid by 2013, Ferrari plans a souped-up hybrid for…someday, and Jaguar toys with a hybrid powered by a tiny gas turbine.

In other news, tigers get a reprieve, and global warming may be the reason trees in the Eastern U.S. are growing faster.

The Week’s News from the Matter Network is a post from: The Ferris Files

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Photo Credit: www.democraticunderground.com

In a last-ditch effort to save climate legislation this year, a consortium of clean-energy groups met today in Washington and kicked off a week of intense planning and lobbying.

The notion of Clean Energy Week was born only a few weeks ago, when several groups realized they had planned events in the capital at the same time. Hasty organization didn’t prevent speakers at an opening press conference today from hammering on a consistent message: that the United States might gain 1.9 million jobs in the next decade if some version of a cap-and-trade bill is passed this year.

One participating group is the Coalition for the Green Bank, whose co-founder, Reed Hundt, said, “As the president made clear in his State of the Union address, a focus on green jobs is the immediate focus for the clean energy sector, and in fact by promoting the double whammy of clean energy generation and transmission along with energy efficiency, literally millions of fine new jobs can be created over the next several years.”

Organizers have high hopes for a “Business Fly-In” on Thursday, when 200 CEOs of clean-energy businesses arrive to meet with swing legislators and put a face on the possibility of jobs creation.

Other events include RETECH, a three-day conference between business, nonprofits and government on renewable energy.

Prospects for a climate bill retreated two weeks ago, when the Democratic Party lost its filibuster-proof majority in the Senate with the special election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

However, President Obama’s repeated emphasis on clean energy and jobs in his State of the Union speech last week has invigorated advocates that an agreement might still be won.

In Lobbying Congress, Clean Energy Advocates Seize on Jobs is a post from: The Ferris Files

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We found our assigned campsite on a patch of riverbank so pristine that we could make out the prints a cougar had left the night before. Our tent stakes entered the silty soil without resistance. Steep ridges rose up on all sides. Millennia ago this valley had been hacked out by the Athabasca Glacier, so immense and muscular that it literally moved mountains. This humble river trickled down the mighty canyon it had created.

I looked around for the source of all that ice. To the southwest I could just make out the Columbia Icefields, where the Athabasca began, and saw isolated patches of ice that had retreated to the tops of the highest peaks. Global warming at work.

One doesn’t require a degree in glaciology to know that when this ice disappears, so will the river, and with it the freshwater that has supplied the towns and farms of central Alberta since…well, since there were towns and farms.

This glacier melt is the freshest, cleanest water on the planet. When it’s gone, what will we drink? Reclaimed ocean water? I felt brine in my throat.

Then I looked down at our bank, covered several feet deep with river sediment, the richest, most fertile soil you can imagine. The river has been dropping so fast that plants haven’t even had time to grow here.

It appears that only a few years ago, our campsite would have been underwater. That’s how fast the river is disappearing. Looking up at the dots of ice, I thought, just a few years left.

I looked around at our placid, majestic scene and had to fight back a sense of alarm. When I return to this campsite in a few years, will there still be a river? Will there be water for us to drink?

The Ice Machine, Running Dry is a post from: The Ferris Files

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Greg Monzel holds a handful of street-caught amaranth.

Yesterday, on a 106-degree afternoon in Portland, Oregon, I met two food enthusiasts and searched for something to eat among the sidewalk weeds.

Urban foraging, as it’s called, is the latest wave in the local food movement, where “local” can mean a crack in the asphalt, and one adopts a relaxed definition of “food.” My guides were Rebecca Lerner and Greg Monzel, who have a passion for nourishing themselves with plants that most people consider pests.

In the blazing heat on NE Alberta Street, Greg spotted a purslane plant in the dirt strip by a Quonset hut. We bent down to taste a leaf. The dirt was littered with cigarette butts and Wrigley gum wrappers, which made me less than hungry. On the other hand, Rebecca told me, purslane is known to be rich in omega-3 fatty acids. The leaves had a refreshing crunch that reminded me of Romaine lettuce.

Why bother eating weeds? One day it might be a matter of survival. As global warming disrupts our crops in the same manner that this scorching afternoon browned the lawns, humans may need to learn to seek food from the margins. But Greg and Rebecca are having more fun than that. They seek to overturn the notion that food is something that must be bought from a store, or even grown in a field.

“We have this weird mentality that we hate these certain plants, for some reason. It’s kind of silly.” Greg said.

They also say it’s fun, spotting edibles where others see only overgrowth. We found mallow, a flower that reveals a cheese-wheel-shaped morsel when the petals are stripped away. We found volunteer blackberry bushes in a vacant lot and gorged on the warm berries. In the alley next to Dixon’s Rib Pit, we found a yellow dock plant and stripped off handfuls of the amber-colored grains, which the two would later boil like rice.

Recently, Rebecca tried to go an entire week eating only what she was able to forage on in the streets and parks of Portland and wrote about the experience on her blog. It didn’t go so well. After five days of nearly starving on a diet of stinging-nettle broth, pineapple weed tea and ant eggs, she awoke weak and seeing spots, and surrendered to the grocery store. She learned that the success of foraging depends greatly on when you do it (few plants were in an edible state in late May), and that foraging as a modern-world practice works best when it supplements a more conventional diet.

We returned to Rebecca’s place, where she and Greg steeped a tea from St. John’s wort, blackberry and huckleberry leaves, and self-heal and red clover flowers they had gathered that week. The brew had a slightly spicy flavor, respectable as any store-bought tea grown on a plantation thousands of miles away.

A Feast of Weeds is a post from: The Ferris Files

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The bag bangs and rattles down the chute in a loud and satisfying way. It is a journey of only five floors but seems to take forever, long enough for me to reflect what makes this chute so much better than the trash cans I have known.

With my chute, I don’t have to carry my waste out to the side yard, or haul the bin to the curb each week, or worry about the trash can overflowing. Instead, I simply enjoy the sound of the bag arriving in the basement Dumpster with a soggy, feathery crash. Gone!

The chute works because of invisible elves. Every trash system relies on elves, of course – the Garbage Truck Elves who whisk the garbage cans off the curb, and the Dump Elves that store our nasties someplace we can’t see them, and sometimes Recycling Elves, the most magical of all, who transform empty cans of Campbell’s soup into the chassis of a Ford Focus.

The trash-chute system employs even more elves, including the Dumpster Removal Elf, the Refuse Room Cleaning Elf, and the occasional services of the Clogged Garbage Chute Elf. It’s like Santa’s Workshop around here.

Not to say that trash chutes are always problem-free. There are unspoken rules, rules so memorable when broken that one rarely makes the same mistake twice. Take the Bag Your Trash rule. I discovered it when I shook the contents of my vacuum-cleaner tube down the chute.Who knew there’s an updraft?

Handfuls of dust blew into my face, and suddenly the air of the refuse room was filled with lint. I beat a quick retreat and left one more chore for the Dustpan Elf.

In a few weeks I move out of this apartment building and return to the horizontal world of the trash can. I will miss the trash chute, its dramatic noises and the magical elves.

I will save my pennies for the day when, shopping at Target, I spy my first garbage robot.

Why Garbage Chutes Beat Trash Cans is a post from: The Ferris Files

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Which immediately brought questions to mind. Who made the star of “Kiss My Brass” the voice of the city’s greenery? And since when do trees need a publicist?

I grew up in the California suburbs, where the trees grew thick and strong without the application of a single press release. No one needed to explain that the mulberry in the front yard was better than pavement, and this held true everywhere I looked: Trees were beloved, from the stoutest Sierra conifer to the most down-and-out palm in Beverly Hills.

In New York, however, MillionTreesNYC has declared trees as the biggest new sensation since Hannah Montana. Banners on the subway inform riders that trees provide shade, filter stormwater, clean pollution, and are quite nice to look at, too. Are New Yorkers such a bunch of Gollums that they need this spin?

Apparently they do. I did some research and found that if you’re a young tree, you might be better off in a logging camp. A 2004 study in Baltimore discovered that 325,000 of the city’s 2.5 million trees died each year, especially the saplings near big apartment buildings. Who could have guessed that a diet of urine, spilled Pepsi, and the occasional bodycheck by a car bumper isn’t the most nurturing environment?

Now I began to understand the logic behind the Million-Tree March. Flood the streets with a 100,000 saplings. Shake head regretfully as reports arrive of mysterious deaths near neighborhood taverns – somehow right around 2 a.m. – and knife attacks by deranged initial-carving lovers. The next year, send out 100,000 more.

One could draw a comparison between the MillionTreesNYC campaign and the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy: In the role of the slavering orc hordes, eight million New Yorkers; as the hapless, wide-eyed hobbits, a million tender saplings.

This puts Bette Midler in the awkward role of Gandalf, which might best be achieved by transferring that helmet of curls to her chin. We can at least be thankful these trees are deaf.

The battle will last a decade or longer, and the bodycount will be high. The gutters will run with fertilizer. If enough greenhorns are thrown in the trenches, a battalion of gnarled veterans will achieve the thick bark of maturity. The Big Apple might emerge a cooler, shadier Eden, where the maples stand tall and New Yorkers are saved from themselves.

Truly, those million trees are the seed that with the sun’s love, in the spring, becomes the rose – uh, I mean the redbud.

Will the Trees Take Manhattan? is a post from: The Ferris Files

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A closeup of Stuart Haygarth's "Spectacle" chandelier, made entirely from used eyeglasses. Photo credit: Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images.

Last year New York’s Museum of Arts and Design moved into a gleaming white cube on Columbus Circle,  giving no hint of its former identity as the American Craft Museum. But this popsicle-stick-and-glitter past helped me make sense of the current exhibit called “Second Lives.”

It demonstrates new uses for everyday things, and had me look at the rummage pile anew. (The exhibit continues through April 19. No photos were allowed; to see the best images, see the site here.)

The delight at MAD was in sighting an item that looked like your typical modern-art installation and, upon a closer look, finding it composed of things that might reside in my apartment: a tapestry made from high-end clothing labels, miniature trees cut from paper shopping bags, a chaise lounge soldered from quarters, a portrait assembled from standard black hair combs.

Many of these projects were so attractive and easily reproduced that they could easily be commercialized. Why couldn’t IKEA sell chandeliers made from old eyeglasses?  Or Target sell Buddha statuettes sculpted from phone books?

The exhibit asks, Why dig up new stuff from the ground? The material you need is right here!

As I left I brainstormed what art I could make out of the items that collect in the apartment no matter what I do. Light covers from plastic Food Emporium bags? Light fixtures from 7-Up cans? What could I confect from all my old MetroCards?

The Fine Art of Recycling is a post from: The Ferris Files

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I saw a woman on 65th Street reach past the fence with one hand – the other held a cellphone to her ear –  and grab two stems with her fingers. A gardener had nurtured those shoots, someone else had trucked them into the city, and yet another person did the planting. The result: yellow florets of gentility amid the concrete and exhaust.

I heard the roots rip from the soil. The woman carried them off to adorn a cubicle or kitchen table. Two freebies for her, two less breaths of fresh air for the rest of us.

I’m Not OK with Your Bouquet is a post from: The Ferris Files

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I braved the chill and dark to join this event because it combined two rarities. Jews are everywhere in New York, but if one’s not Jewish it’s unusual to see them worship. And no one goes out of their way to celebrate Apollo in Manhattan. Dionysus maybe, but not Apollo.

The event, called a Birkat Hachamah, comes only once every 28 years, when the sun rises in the same position it did on the week the Earth began. That’s approximate, of course; to learn how the rabbis arrived at this date, read this informative New York Times story.

As the sun peeked out over the East River, a trio played music. The congregants sang along with “Dayenu,” a hymn of thanks that Jews will sing again tonight during Passover. Among the men in yarmulkes, a black man in long dreadlocks mouthed the words with tears streaming down his face. The rabbi Joshua Metzger spoke over the roar of construction trucks roaring across 1st Avenue.

The ancient tradition of Birkat Hachamah is more relevant than ever because, Metzger said, “These days, natural processes are seen to be as magnificent as the splitting of the Red Sea.”

I squinted at the sun rising up from Queens and said, Amen.

Oy, the Sun! is a post from: The Ferris Files

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LEDs at Greenhouse go easy on the eye, and the electricity.

The other night I attended a fundraiser at Greenhouse, the SoHo club that claims to be New York’s first eco-disco. The rumors said Stevie Nicks would be there. Even more than her purring vocals, I sought a bigger hit:  Can a hipster nightclub really be “sustainable,” or is it an illusion?

Since it opened in December in West Chelsea, Greenhouse has sought two stamps of approval. One is LEED status from the U.S. Green Building Council, to prove wise use of resources.  The club claims to have installed low-flow toilets, swanky waterless urinals, high-efficiency ventilation systems and bamboo paneling. It bought wind-energy credits to supply the power for the speakers, which tonight played (you guessed it) Stevie Nicks.

The second and more important stamp of approval is, of course, the clientele’s. A “green” nightclub must walk an uneasy line: kind to the Earth, yes, but without denying patrons the sense of luxury that they expect. No one wants to party with Dudley Do-Right.

The magic bullet? LEDs!

LEDs are the no-brainer of eco-chic. They use one-thirtieth the power of incandescent bulbs, going easy on the power grid, but they are twinkly and pretty and still novel enough to be hip. As an environmental gesture they are easily and immediately understood. I can’t confirm of Greenhouse’s other environmental claims without examining the water bill or drilling a sample of the bamboo siding. LEDs, we get.

Selso, Tim and Bobbi keep it chic at a corner table.

Greenhouse lays them on thick. Thousands of them twinkle from every wall. Alongside them climb ivylike leaves. Greenhouse says these are real plants, treated with fireproofing material, but between my fingers they felt like plastic. Hundreds of crystals hung from the ceiling.

I found my friend Bobbi and her friend Tim at a corner table. Under the transparent tabletop sprouted an arrangement of pinecones. In a moment we met Bobbi’s friend Selso, who wore a black cloth over her eyes and was, as the song goes, too sexy for this club.

Since this was a benefit the drinks were free. I was so bowled over by this fact that I neglected to notice if my martini was made with Vodka 360, the eco-brand that Greenhouse promotes as its house spirit.

Then Stevie Nicks arrived and proved a big disappointment. She walked with her entourage straight through to the VIP area, said she was delighted to see us all, then surrendered the mike without singing a note. Half an hour later she left. I found it much more enjoyable to talk with Selso, who commented how handsome I was before she sashayed away for a drink. I asked Tim, “So how do you know her?”

“Oh, Selso’s not a her,” Tim said. “Selso is a man.”

My jaw dropped. I watched Selso turn heads as he swung his hips and showed just a glimpse of corset. Which just goes to show that in New York, the women, and the clubs, are not necessarily to be trusted. The sparkly things can deceive you.

Eco? Maybe. Friendly? Mostly. is a post from: The Ferris Files

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Saul Griffith breaks down his personal carbon footprint.

The conference, now in its second year, met as both the electronics industry and the green movement suffer from the economic downturn. Half the seats stood empty in the conference room, and the show floor held more journalists than there were exhibitors to them to interview.

Keynote speaker Saul Griffith, a design pioneer, advocated reducing our carbon footprint through what he called “the Montblanc pen approach to design”: Make far fewer products, but make them so well that they never need to be replaced.

But does that formula apply to gadgetry that is in perpetual upgrade? Stephen Harper, the director of energy and environment policy for Intel, said his company hopes to foster “a culture of repair rather than replacement” – an easy argument to make when your company makes just the microprocessors.

On the same panel, Michael Murphy, the manager of worldwide environmental affairs for computer-maker Dell, pointed out that constant replacement has its pluses: today’s Dell PC is far more energy-efficient than one made six years ago.

One thing is sure: The goal of a “sustainable” cellphone or music player is still many product cycles away.

Can Our Gadgets Really Be Green? is a post from: The Ferris Files

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Emperor of the Air

“Emperor of the Air,” as read for Radhika Kumar is a post from: The Ferris Files

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I’m writing to tell you that reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated and that the adventure continues here:

www.ayearinnewyork.com

That’s right, A Year In New York. I’ve moved to the Big Apple for a year! From July 2008 until July 2009, I am reporting every day for 365 days from the biggest, liveliest, most rat-infested hive of activity America has ever known, New York City.

What is it like to be a newcomer to America’s premier city at the beginning of the 21st Century? What sort of trouble can an outdoor adventurer find in deep urban canyons, on an island surrounded by fast-moving rivers, with a little open space known as Central Park?

That’s what I’m looking to create in a daily snapshot. Have a look, and post a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

A New Adventure is a post from: The Ferris Files

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2. Make a comment such as, “Hello you two, I bought you this great gift.” Please include the exact product name/s, as some items in the registry are similar.

3. When prompted for your email address, enter David or Anjali’s email address. This way we won’t know who you are.

4. Don’t worry that your comment will be seen by others on the Internet. This comment will be forwarded to me, where I will gather the information and delete the message.

5. When we receive your note, we will remove the gift listing from the Registry page, so others won’t be able to claim it, unless we want a duplicate.

David & Anjali’s Wedding Registry is a post from: The Ferris Files

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For an hour I hector a group of office workers, mostly women, to climb up and down flights of the fabled Dipsea Steps, and then I make them do all sorts of unpleasant, sweaty things with dumbbells in Old Mill Park. Often they are miserable. But they keep coming back.

This has been going on for several years now. One day a few months ago, while hanging around at the library that adjoins the park, I ran into the library’s director (and one of my students) in the company of a photographer.

The result is this photo which appears on the “Find Books & Do Research” page of the library’s website. The reference librarian in the picture is named Cathy and, truth be told, we are not finding books and doing research. We are clowning for the camera. Consider it our little secret.

Pretending to Work is a post from: The Ferris Files

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