It was supposed to be a showcase for the dot-com era, dedicated to the proposition that students from kindergarten to 12th grade didn't need a "brick and mortar" school with old-fashioned teachers but instead could …

Perhaps because it started as Physicians Insurance Company of Ohio and still reports to shareholders as an insurance business, PICO Holdings of La Jolla doesn't like to answer questions about water-resources development. The firm refers …

Viewed on a street map, the 32nd Street canyon, as locals call it, is a patch of blank page interrupting the north-south grid of Golden Hill between Cedar and C Streets to the north and …

Ex-San Diego city councilman Byron Wear, at least temporarily sidelined from electioneering after copping a plea to ethics charges over his campaign-funding practices, is keeping his hand in local school-board politics. He and wife Bridget …

The remote and rugged upper reach of Anza-Borrego's most famous "palm canyon," Borrego Palm Canyon, has suddenly become much easier to explore. Last summer's mammoth Pines Fire, which originated near Julian, swept many miles north …

Heymatt: Boys Town, Chicago; the Castro, San Francisco; Greenwich Village, New York; Hillcrest, San Diego. How did these communities become Shangri-Las for the Fa La Las, in other words, GLBT? I would like to start …

Heymatt: I am male, over 50 years old. I know who my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were. That's easy. What I don't know is whether any of the actual cells, molecules, or tiny atoms of …

Hey, Matt: My new Thomas Guide, page 1227, identifies the ocean just off Scripps as "Scripps Institution submerged land area (private)." Can Scripps actually own the ocean bottom? If I dove there, could I sue …

Hey: Which of the following expels air from the body fastest, hardest: sneeze, cough, or fart? What would happen if you did all three at the same time? -- Dave from Arkansas Another big thinker …