In between working on the orchard/chicken-run fence and praying for quail eggs, I’ve come across quite a few notable items on the web. Here are some of my favorites:

• Michael Pollan, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch
  Michael Pollan’s latest piece in the New York TImes Magazine traces our love of food TV, from Julia Child to Iron Chef, and asks why we spend more time watching cooking on television than doing it ourselves. It’s a must read.
• Treehugger, Jellyfish Changing the Ocean’s Temperature…by Stirring It??
  Can the cumulative effect of swimming fish have as much impact in mixing the oceans as the tides? It just goes to show that the biosphere has just as much a hand in shaping our living planet as the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere.
• TED Talks, Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering
  Gever Tulley talks about his tinkering school for kids. They build some amazing stuff and show the real potential of project based learning–engaging our children in creative exercise that prepares them for the ups and downs of the real world.
  
• Charlie McCarthy, Flight Patterns
  This is just beautiful. Charlie McCarthy uses time lapse and long exposure photography to trace the flight patterns of insects around a light post. Via Cartoon Brew
  

  flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

• FORA.tv, Food Security and Climate Change @ The Open Society Institute
  FORA presents wonderful discussion with Ross Gelbspan, Mark Hertsgaard, and Sara Scherr on how we can adapt agriculture to meet the coming challenges of climate change. Chapter 7, Allowing Trees to Grow in Grain Fields in Africa, is a particularly interesting description of agroforestry and permaculture in Niger.