About this Issue

In this issue of Interface, March 2003, we present an extensive menu of resources. If there is a dominant theme to the issue it is, not surprisingly, electronic communication. Lenny Charnoff, in "Blogs, And Vlogs – Can They Save You Time?" < http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/charnoff.php > discusses on e of the most popular current applications, "Blogs" which are particularly popular with youthful users, but are rapidly spreading into a number of communities. Our medical columnist Kevin Kawamoto examines another age group's use of the Internet in "Older Adults and the Internet." <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/kawamoto.php> Mindy Cameron, formerly an editor of The Seattle Times discusses her uses of the Internet in " A Professional Writer Looks at Electronic Communication." <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/cameron.php>

For our large audience of educators, we offer two pieces. One, by Kristy Smolenski deals with one of the true weaknesses of the Internet, the manner in which facilitates plagiarism. In her article "Dealing with Plagiarism in Online Classes", <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/onlineEd.php> Kristy Smolenski presents a number of solutions and her experience with them. In "Leave No Teacher Behind" <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/grants.php> our education editor, Mark Szymanski, discusses the Bush administration's treatment of Colleges of Education, and introduces some grants that will be of particular interest to students and teachers at those institutions.

In our book reviews for this issue, we turn from serious analyses of the impact of the Internet to two fiction writers who are very popular among those with particular interest in computing, William Gibson <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/gibson.php> and Neal Stephenson <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/stephenson.php>.

In our Life-long Learning feature we offer the anthropologist Cheleen Mahar's review of a book that discusses how another people, the Western Apache, imagine their own particular place, in her review of Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache, By Keith H. Basso <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/mahar.php>. For those wanting to understand what it is that academic anthropologists do at present, this will be a useful review, as well as offering insight into a radically different view of "place" than the conventional one.

Our tech editor for this issue, Jesse Snyder treats an increasingly annoying element of the Internet, Pop-up ads. Jesse introduces us to a number of ways to solve, or at least to ameliorate this problem. <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/tech.php>

Our editor Jeffrey Barlow, who spent January working in Taiwan and studying the computer industry there, finishes up a two-part analysis of the current state of Sino-Taiwan-American relations as impacted by recent political and economic issues. The Taiwanese make nearly all the flat panel computer screens found in the United States, and the future of their society is potentially important to all of us. <http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/edit.php>

As always, we hope that you find this issue of Interface useful and entertaining. We encourage you to submit your own works and all inquiries are welcome at barlowj@pacificu.edu.

Jeffrey Barlow

Editor, Interface