Monthly Archives: March 2014

Laser Schmaser

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laser pizza cutter

I’m picky about pizza. I’ve lived nearly all my life in New York City — home to pizza meccas John’s, 109 year old Lombardi’s, and block long lines in Brooklyn for newcomer di Fara’s – along with hours logged in New Haven, another pizza culinary center. Back here in NY, we not only have a favorite local pizza joint mere blocks away, but know and love Sal, the incredibly colorful only-in-NYC character who owns it.

It was at his place, where the tables are no-nonsense Formica but the eggplant on his slices escapes deep frying, that we taught one of our nieces the right way to eat a slice. I’m waiting for her pizza-off with Donald Trump on The Daily Show.

Folded and forkless (and laserless).

Folded and forkless (and laserless).

 

I try not to get too tied up in traditionalism with my food. I’ve openly accepted the outlier cinnamon raisin bagel as legit. (Hey, even Russ and Daughters sells them.) Blueberry, though, is another story. Similarly, I don’t turn in elitist disgust from most pizza toppings — so long as “most” doesn’t include pineapple.

Nor do I knee-jerk reject modern improvements. I make my knee wait a bit past the initial reflex until my head can tell it what it really should do. (I’m getting to the point. Promise.)

Add to this acceptance and open-mindedness to technology that lasers, are really, really cool. I get off on using my laser “tape” measure, especially as it’s an extremely handy tool when you happen to be an architect. But here’s where things cross the (uncut) line: a Tactical Laser-Guided Pizza Cutter.

Now a tactic is, more or less, a means to achieve something. Since the laser doesn’t actually divide the pizza into equal size pieces, which I could see as a valuable goal in some competitive or jealous families, I’m not sure this device is actually tactical at all. Unless the goal is simply some sort of nerdy coolness.

Alongside this object’s nomination as Wrongest Product nominee, I wonder if a better version might be a Strategic Laser Pizza Cutter. Its mission: to disintegrate by laser any wayward pineapple bits. That I could get behind – although, really, a fork would still do.

The next step? Illustration by Lori Greenberg

The next step?
Illustration by Lori Greenberg/Bergworks

The Wrongest Product Awards will go to those products (and their designers) that embody the least amount of redeeming value while incurring the use of unnecessary, often gratuitous, materials or energy.

How is this relevant to EcoOptimism, you might ask? Easy – it shows how extraneous so many products are, often in a “what-were-they-thinking” sense.

Nominations are open. Send yours to ImNotBuyinIt (at) EcoOptimism.com.

 

Does An Environmentalist Have To Be a Treehugger?

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photo by David Bergman

photo by David Bergman

Am I biophilically challenged? And does that diminish my eco cred?

One of the talks I’ve given at recent conferences is titled “Nature in Cities/Cities in Nature,” and among the topics I discuss is biophilia. As defined by E.O. Wilson, who literally wrote the book, biophilia is “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms,” our genetically determined affinity as human beings with the natural world.

When I get to the biophilia section of my talk, I get personal. I “confess” that we don’t have any plants in our apartment, that I’m not exactly the great outdoors type (cue the Eva Gabor lines from the old TV show Green Acres “New York is where I’d rather stay. I get allergic smelling hay.”) and I don’t feel deprived if I don’t escape the supposed confines of the city. In fact, my wife and I often feel the opposite when we take a rare excursion to areas where trees outnumber lampposts.

So what to make of the common advice (sometimes admonishment) that we all need a bit of Henry Thoreau in us? (It’s worth noting, by the way, that Thoreau’s sojourn in his Walden Pond cabin was actually pretty short.) How should I react to an article like this recent one titled “Why your career needs a walk in the woods?”

In my talk, I find two faults in this idea that you can only appreciate nature and only be a “real” environmentalist if you yearn for cold water showers and mosquito bites. One lies in the hair shirt back-to-the-earth philosophy that many treehuggers identify with and that, simultaneously, many non-treehuggers identify environmentalists with. I see no reason why that’s a prerequisite for appreciating nature.

Is it not possible that I might appreciate a tree or a squirrel MORE because I see them less frequently?  And more still when I see them within the concrete “jungle?”

The other fault is in the presumption that one can only find nature out in, well, nature. Seems a bit of a circular definition. One of the tenets of many environmental concepts is that humanity is not separate from nature and that it’s only when we regard ourselves as something apart from – and perhaps superior to – nature that we get into trouble ecologically.

If we are not separate from nature, then logically our cities are not unnatural. They are no more unnatural than, say, a beaver’s dam or a termite mound. All three alter the previous landscape and put something conforming to the needs of a species in its place. In fact, you could argue that in some ways cities are more natural than a termite mound or a beehive since the latter habitats support only their builders while cities support many organisms beside humans.

Point being that cities are both natural and awash in ecosystems, and one needn’t leave a city to fulfill biophilic or even treehugger-ly needs. So don’t revoke my enviro status in light of my rampant urbanism.