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For those of you not in the know, Beakman and Jax are a couple of scientists who write a weekly column in comic form that is published on Sundays with the rest of the comics, and for those of us who dearly miss Calvin and Hobbes, this is an attempt at replacing the wonder and rapture that Calvin and his coil gave us each week; wonder at the amazing things life has to offer, and for which we may not always - in fact, seldom - have the answers or the reasons why. Calvin and Hobbes delighted in finding things that they couldn't understand, and explaining these phenomena in more or less theoretical or philosophical terms. Beakman and Jax give us hard facts, in an easy to swallow package.
These guys thrive on off-the-wall questions, submitted mostly by kids, about simple things that we all take for granted, maybe because we've become inured to the fact that that's just how it is. Weak. One of the lead-ins on the B&J homepage states, "A good question is a very powerful thing." Well said. And they put their website where their mouth is. It's simple to navigate, doesn't have any confusing lingo or images and is downright fun, besides being incredibly informative. Hyperlinks include answers to questions with interactive demos, what's coming up in the future, information about their TV show, and an explanation that many of the images you'll see are really buttons that You Can (Italics theirs, because the column is called You Can With Beakman and Jax) click to see what happens. On the bottom of the first page are also 3 other buttons which guide you to 50 Terrific Questions, Interactive Demos, and the Guest Book. I logged onto the guest book some time ago, and haven't heard anything since, but that doesn't mean anything. The fun is in the hyperlinks. The questions are typical of what kids might ask, and, at times are phrased as they might ask them. For example, "Why is poop brown?". I am not making this up. The answer is pretty straight-forward, with no big words left out, and often broken down so they can be pronounced phonetically, including syllabic accents. This is equivalent to kids asking some of the sex questions, and instead of the parent getting nervous and over-reacting, the parent just gives a straight-forward answer to the question, which leaves the door open to the kid to ask another and another, and let them know they're free to do that whenever they need to. I think this is truly very supportive of raising kids that are well-adjusted and healthy. The science background of the 2 writers comes into play when the question that is asked can best be explained through an easy experiment with items easily found around the house, and when there is some remote danger of the experiment going awry, they list in the necessary things the advice, consent, or presence of an adult. They describe how to do the experiment, and the results you might expect, and then explain them in real-world terms, often including examples that kids would be familiar with. Probably my favorite thing about this website is at the bottom of the homepage. There is a list of photographs of planets and stars and other outer space phenomena. By clicking on the word here you can go straight to that picture, and it downloads to your screen. There is even a hyperlink to the Hubble Space Telescope site, which apparently is very busy, but includes some of the newest images made by the telescope. These files are necessarily large, but very much worth the wait. At the very bottom of the homepage is a list of other places to visit, including hyperlinks and information about the other locations. Some are science-based, others are about art (there is one that is a guided tour of the Louvre in Paris, done by a guy who doesn't have anything to do with the famous museum. The other Louvre is pretty upset with him...), and there are many others. This is one of my favorite websites, as it's informative, non-scatological, and, my favorite part, really fun. I highly recommend it! |