Surprising and Strange

In search of…Big Tepee

Big Tepee? Do you know the way, Jose’? Go around Escondido. Ask anyone about the Big Tepee. Since we can’t bet dollars against donuts anymore — some donuts cost much more than a dollar — let’s wager dollars against Chargers super bowl appearances that people asked that question will believe you should go to a big tepee of the medical kind. There’s an answer to…


Where have all the payphones gone?

“A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or a privacy hood, with pre-payment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card. Around the Big Apple, Google Sidewalk Labs is replacing them with free city-wide Wi-Fi. In Ireland, units now are used less than once every…



Move over Octomom, Birch Aquarium welcomes 70 baby weedy seadragons carried to birth by proud papa

Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is celebrating the arrival of more than 70 tiny newborn Weedy Seadragons, which are incredibly difficult to breed and rear in captivity.  Only a handful of facilities have successfully hatched and reared this unique species of fish that are related to seahorses and pipefish. “This is huge for us. We’ve been working on this…


Death and dying with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The archive of the influential psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who developed the theory of the five stages of grief, has been given to Stanford Libraries, Stanford University officials said this week. What does that have to do with Escondido? Plenty. Of special note in the archive are complete runs of newsletters from the Shanti Nilaya Healing Center, which Kübler-Ross founded in Escondido, as well as manuscript…


Meet the Cosmic Ray Deflection Society of North America (RIP Also Aswell)

 (RIP CHUCK ALSTON AKA ALSO ASWELL, GRAND FOUNDER AND POOBAH OF THE COSMIC RAY DEFLECTION SOCIETY AKA KRUDZNA INK. A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, Aswell worked for many years as a chef at New Orleans. Also, a prolific artist and thinker, Aswell led the way for numerous storied events and adventures. Following a long series of health battles, he died peacefully in his sleep…


Forget ChatGPT, spinach sending emails thanks to MIT

It may sound like something out of a futuristic science fiction film, but scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants which are capable of sending emails, according to Marthe de Ferrer of Euronews.green. Through nanotechnology, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have transformed spinach into sensors capable of detecting explosive materials. These plants are then able to wirelessly relay this information back to…


Jack Cust Story — ‘One Degree of ‘Dr. Strangeglove’

The ghost of Richard Lee “Dick” Stuart was alive and well that warm, languid evening at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on Gene Autrey Way. Many of you weren’t born when Stuart, infamously known as Dr. Strangeglove following the Stanley Kubrick 1964 classic of the same name, held court and, oopsy-daisy, drop-kicked balls from 1958 to 1969. Stuart didn’t just butcher the rawhide. He stewed, filleted,…


Can males get pregnant? Ask a La Jolla seadragon.

In “an extremely rare occurrence,” a pregnant male seadragon made history at a La Jolla aquarium. The weedy seadragon’s pregnancy marks “the first successful transfer of eggs from a female seadragon to a male” at the Seadragons & Seahorses habitat at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, a Jan. 9 news release from the aquarium said. “We’re elated to…


Tracking the wild parrots of San Diego County

Seen a wild pandemonium of parrots lately? Report it immediately. That’s the question and request posed by University of San Diego Biology Instructor Dr. Janel Ortiz and her San Diego Parrot Project, along  with “parrot sighting submission form” and a hardy SDPP thank you. Ortiz took the academic show on the road Wednesday. That’s when she and her flock of students took flight with a…