Ile Aux Canards Coral Reef Noumea in Noumea

For a truly surreal experience, Right-click on the panorama and select "little planet" view for a truly awesome and surreal perspective on things. Then click and drag from the edge to the center to swap which part of the show - the reef or the water - is the "planet."

And make sure to click through using the link at the bottom of the embed to see this thing in its full-browser-window glory! [Via] - Jeremiah

Chances are, your child does not understand just how big a blue whale - the largest animal in the known universe - actually is. Chances are, you don't either. So go on a quick educational journey with them and discover a blue whale, one computer screen's worth at a time.

Above, a screen capture from my view of the blue behemoth. But that's the full view of what I was looking at on the screen - the blowhole - shrunk down to a size that would fit in this post. The actual size, if I crop instead of resize my screen capture, shows you how much of a blue whale you can see on Punnybop at one time:

ACTUAL SIZE*

Check it out with your kid, you will both be amazed!

* I think we deserve a gold star for being the first blog of 2009 to find reason to use both the "blink" tag and animated gifs. Suck it, Web 2.0! - Jeremiah

This one's sure to get a laugh from your preschooler.


Snails Go west ! Funny TimeLapse from www.time-lapse.fr on Vimeo.

[Via] - Jeremiah

Once upon a time, some water in the ocean was warmed by the sun and floated up into the sky in little bits so small no one could see them. When the water got up high enough, the little bits started to stick together, and they made some little clouds. And one of the little clouds was named Gerald.

Gerald the Cloud

A brief discussion of clouds and could types with Z during a long car ride got me thinking that an interesting story could be made of characters who were different cloud types, and I liked the idea of a character who formed at the beginning of a story and dissipated at the end, as a part of the water cycle. I bounced some ideas off Jenni and then wrote and edited and wrote some more until I came up with something to present to my daughter. Having already heard a rough cut of "The Two Bears and the Carousel," our first audio story release, I found it easier to think of the story in terms of its sounds; theatre actor and director Josiah Wallace made great use of the opportunities for sound effects. As with our previous release, Ken McNichols composed and performed music, and Joshua McNichols, a reporter at Seattle public radio station KUOW, recorded, collected sound effects, and mixed the audio. Some stereo effects are lost in mono listening (the mountain goat's heartbeat, for example) but the story should work on any device.

You can listen to the file by clicking on the story title above, or right-click on it to "Save As" and download the mp3 file. We're also now hosting these stories on an "Audio Archive" page on Punnybop, where we'll organize all future hosted and original entertainment content. (Yep, we have plans.)

This file is hereby released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. You are welcome to download, share, and remix it as you like, provided you credit this original work, cite ZRecs.com as its creator, do not distribute it or derivative works for profit, and link to it so others can find it at the source.

Photo by KmountMan, shared via Flickr. - Jeremiah

Looking for a book to help your child appreciate tomorrow's winter solstice? We recently purchased several books that explore the science and cultural importance of the "return of the sun" marked by the year's longest night. Here are the four we love.


The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice explains the science behind the seasons, but focuses on how people have celebrated and understood this change throughout the centuries. Throughout this retelling, it unveils the origins of elements we now associate with Christmas celebrations (the role of wreaths, candles, and caroling, for example) and leaves the dots to be connected through discussions between parents and children. | $11


Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest tells the amazing and bizarre story of Raven, who turns himself into a pine needle in order to be swallowed by the Sky Chief's daughter so she will give birth to him as a bird-baby so he can steal the sun from a box in their lodge and give it to the dark world, so humans would have light. Lovely illustrations, a fascinating tale. | $7


Reading By Day and Night: Explore Your World is truly an act of exploration - offering pages of short, thematic content on astronomy as it relates to the cycles of the sun and moon, with pop-open paper doors, holes to look through, and a few really good paper effects we'll shoot a video of soon. | Hardbound, $11


The Return of the Light is my personal favorite among these books, with 12 short stories taken from a wealth of cultures - Norse, Inuit, Polynesia, Venezuela. This is a book that will be thoroughly enjoyed by children 6 and up, and younger when read with parents who can help engage with the story (no pictures, after all). | Softcover, $12 - Jeremiah

Sometimes the most astonishing things never stop being astonishing, especially when you experience them anew through the eyes of a four-year-old whose new obsession is all things astronomical. In the last week a cheap plastic model of the solar system has captivated Z and launched her into a real understanding of the seasons and day/night cycle as well as inspiring her to scoop up a factoid or two about each planet in our solar system. Her favorite so far seems to be Venus, because it has "bad breath" that will kill you (toxic gases). She does not seem quite aware at this point that visiting any other planet in our solar system and breathing its atmosphere would kill you. We'll save that one for a bit.

Here are the three videos we showed Z last night that amazed us all: One excellent computer animation about the flight, amazing landing, and activities of the Mars Rover that you just have to see to believe; one nice slideshow of images of our sun and each of the planets in our solar system; and one virtual solar system model that shows the planets in motion and reveals the astonishingly vast differences in size between the planets, our sun, and other stars. Jaw-droppingly good stuff.





- Jeremiah