Editor's Note

Does the world need another Explore magazine?

Probably not. A Canadian magazine has that handle. So does a research magazine at the University of Florida.

Then there's Explore! magazine, about alternative and holistic medicine.

Nevertheless, we've decided to use the word in the title of our new University of Kansas research webzine.

It's called Explore:

Why?

Because the name Explore, minus the colon, once belonged to an award-winning research magazine produced here at KU. It lasted 14 years, won 42 regional and national awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Since then, the World Wide Web has mushroomed, so late last year, the thought arose: Why not do a web-based research magazine? It would have lower production costs and a longer reach than a hard-copy version.

We use the colon to set ourselves apart from the other Explores. Besides, it's our favorite punctuation mark. A colon is a cliff within a sentence; at the cliff, the reader is hurled from the abstract (before the colon) to the concrete (after).

We hope our reports will occasionally send you over the cliff. We mean that in the nicest possible way. It's always a little invigorating to go over an edge.

What sorts of concrete items will follow that colon? We will report on every kind of research and service project that goes on around here (those we can grasp and put into words, anyway). Here you will find news, analysis, commentaries, opinions, suggestions, speeches, excerpts.

We invite your comments, which will appear in a section of the magazine called "Backtalk," which begins next issue.

We hope to teach you and please you. It is our deep conviction that a little learning is pleasurable thing.

Otherwise, we might have been more tentative.

We might have called the magazine Uh . . . Explore?