Clip of the Week

I was trying to come up with a clever lead-in for this week's Clip of the Week--a video from TED.com, which I've featured here once before--but I really couldn't manage to do a better job of teeing it up than the folks over at TED themselves. So I'll let them take over, and I hope you enjoy this week's clip (warning: at 10 minutes, it's a bit longer than most Clips of the Week).

"It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike."