When Robert Carr Dynes was named chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, in April 1996, he was said to be a man of humble origins. Born in Canada in 1942, the physicist who …

On the most transparent winter days, the view from Emerald Vista Point in Orange County's Crystal Cove State Park spans more than 200 miles of Southern California coastline. Far beyond Dana Point to the southeast, …

"My patient is Tijuana," says Dr. José Rubio Soto. "My hospital is city hall. These are the X-rays." He's peering at a computer screen filled with blobs. It's a map of the city. Tijuana looks …

Jean Winslow, a retired elementary schoolteacher in San Diego, doesn't seem like the sort of person who would be even remotely involved with Internet pornography. Her greatest passion is music. Winslow spends time with her …

A former death-row inmate who beat an 18-year-old murder rap and ended up living as a born-again Christian in his mother's 19-foot trailer at the Mt. Helix View Estates trailer park in El Cajon has …

“The walking tour of downtown’s dark corners and bloody sites include the Grant Hotel. In the 1970s they were taking the old fire escape, and it fell and killed two old fellas from the Plaza Hotel.”

I froze, shut my eyes, while the steam rose. How many times had she pecked at me to drive off the beaten path, search for a restaurant, an antique shop, a flea market. “Stop!” she’d say.

“My roommate is a diehard Catholic, and she gets all ticked off, because, like, I didn’t know that you had to be part of the Church to take the bread and wine, which I always did.”

Like many people, I have a perverse relationship with my work. It’s not that I bite the hand that feeds me — though that is something writers often do — it’s more that I prefer …

Matt, you ignorant slut: I've talked to various experts about what makes the popping sound when you crack your back, and I've gotten a different definitive answer from each of them. So much for expertise …

They were being murdered by the light. I watched and said nothing. When we began our lunch, the sun was just burnishing the windowsill. It was a hot day and Linda had left the window …

On a Friday or Saturday night, when a gentleman comes through the door and I’ve never seen him, I just want him to be aware of what kind of bar this is. A lot of times guys are sent here as a joke.

Between 1769 and 1823, Franciscan padres, Spanish soldiers, and Native Americans built an astonishing chain of settlements — 21 missions and four smaller asistencias — between San Diego and Sonoma. The money to start them …

Where does democracy thrive in Tijuana? Some say right here, in the Minaret Room of the Club Campestre. Of course, this is not really Tijuana. The Tijuana you know throbs and honks and grinds a …

'Let's say that you're an American man, living in France, and you meet and marry a French woman. You decide to spend your honeymoon in America, and while you're here your wife discovers she loves …

A San Diego herbal medicine company has apologized to baseball's Mark McGwire and agreed to pay the Cardinal slugger $75,000 for unauthorized use of his name and photograph in a flyer promoting the company's pain-relieving …

Throughout the San Diego area, thin strips of canyon open-space break the symmetry of the urban/suburban continuum. Sometimes these shreds of natural landscape survive by design. In other cases -- in older neighborhoods especially -- …

“I told you before that we were the big experiment in pay-for-play disc golf courses. Well, the experiment was successful. Now there are tons of pay courses, and the sport has gone nuts.”

As I sped toward the hospital, I thought of the times Jack has driven me to the hospital in the middle of the night. Those times, when our children were born, the streets seemed strangely intimate.

Matthew: What's up with the broken glass on the roads after accidents? Whose job is it to clean up the mess? I've seen glass left in intersections near the beaches, Balboa Park, downtown, etc. I …

Dear Matthew Alice: I am puzzled by the labels on jars of fruit juice. Some boast that they contain 100% juice, while others state they are 25 to 35% juice. Yet upon examining the ingredients, …

Matt: Growing up in Allied Gardens, it was hard not to notice this funny little '50s-style tract house standing on its own at the bottom of Waring Road, right next to the exit to I-8 …

“Janet lived alone in a Paris hotel,” Murray tells me, “so she didn’t have to worry about housekeeping and chores and all of that; she could just concentrate on being a writer.”

Notebooks and pens in hand, the students file into a nondescript meeting room at a Mission Valley hotel. They include retirees, business managers, college-age youths, middle-age men, and tall, thin blondes who look like models. …

'Fox Fox Fox Fox FOX FOX FOX FOX!" You know who they're yelling about: he's the granite-jawed guy standing above everybody else in the hall. Vicente Fox Quesada. Over six feet tall -- and, some …

Union-Tribune editor-in-chief Herb Klein has been advised by San Diego city clerk Chuck Abdelnour that he may have to register as a lobbyist. Klein, whose behind-the-scenes lobbying of city councilmembers on behalf of the taxpayer-financed …

In 1990 the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (a state agency charged with acquiring land for parks in the Los Angeles area) entered negotiations with entertainer Bob Hope to purchase Rocky Peak Park -- a 4369-acre …

"WAKE UP, HONEY. MOM FELL" It was 2:30 a.m. and the words were coming from my wife Terry. Accustomed to composing myself at any hour, I found myself resistant to doing so now, probably because …

Duct tape has saved me only once. I’ve used it plenty but only needed it one time. My Oldsmobile ruptured a radiator hose on the Mass Pike on the way to a Boston Bruins playoff …

Dear Matthew Alice: I've been a bowler for more than 40 years. And it's only last week that it finally hit me. Why are bowling shoes always the same wherever you go, and why are …

Dear Matthew: Okay, here's one that keeps me up nights. If you were driving a car traveling at the speed of light and you turned on the headlamps, would any light project ahead of you? …

Dear Matthew Alice: Why isn't your column titled "Go Ask Alice"? You've never been ten feet tall? -- Chuck W, Oceanside If you pile the elves on top of each other, they'd be about five …

“I can tell when someone’s from that area. There’s a way they pronounce words, a certain intonation. Sometimes they’ll try to disguise it. The Chinese are just as class conscious as anyone else, maybe more so.”

During World War II, Germans called them the schwartze vogelmenschen or “black birdmen.” White American bomber crews called them the Black Redtail Angels. Various other white Americans called them spades, spooks, coons, or sambos, and …

It's all in the eye of the beholder. San Diego public relations representative Vicki Garcia regards her client's plan to perform surgery on the Internet as a "news event -- because it's never been done …

A funny thing happened at Tijuana's cultural center the other day. As dozens of kids, teens, and parents lined up near the giant dome for tickets to the highest-tech movie showing in Tijuana or San …

KPBS, the radio and television station operation owned by the state university system and funded in part by California and federal taxpayers, is stonewalling public requests for information about its big private contributors. The KPBS …

"Did you feel how I used both hands and feet to do that? Now I want you to do it, back and forth between the lake and the bald spot, using hands and feet in coordination.”

Terry Wilson has won five Emmys for his television directing, producing, and on-camera hosting; he’s been a national martial arts champion; and his 1998 article on the Marine dogs of World War II won best-short …

Sunset Mountain stands lofty and somewhat isolated from the main ridge of the Vallecito Mountains in the center of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. As seen from Borrego Springs and other far points to the west, …

The week 150,000 Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait, I felt relieved when I went with Marc and Leah to the airport. Security was tight A lot of plainclothesmen in bulky Israeli sportscoats stood around the lobby.

Matt: My mother-in-law swears that several years ago she went on a tour and saw a street in La Jolla (perhaps in the Mt. Soledad area), or even a block, of "Munchkin" houses. They were …

As long as we're stumbling down Memory Lane, now's the perfect time to make our biennial phone call to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Walk of Fame division, to see whether the brain trust has …