You can drag/drop many things onto an application icon in the dock to open them in a new window. This includes dragging a folder's proxy icon to the terminal a

You can drag/drop many things onto an application icon in the dock to open them in a new window. This includes dragging a folder's proxy icon to the terminal app to open the current Finder window in a new terminal. The proxy icon is the little icon in the top middle of the window, to the left of the name.