London's Bicentennial (Snippet 14)

   Usually these snippets are about old news relating to London. Here are a few minor snippets that are more current. 

One Small Slice For Mankind
   A while back, I noted the closing of London's cricket plant, (see, "Olde Posts Addenda (5)). More recently there was better news on the food front:
  "London-based Company Using A.I. Pizza Machine to Serve Up Fresh Slices," Lauren Stallone, CTV News, April 29, 2026.
   "Appetronix, an automation company in London, is using AI driven dispensing technology to create the ultimate comfort food.“What we have behind us is our fully autonomous robotic pizza making machine,” said Ray Schott, co-founder of Appetronix.The first of its kind, the unique machine was designed to bring freshly made food to places where it is not always available."
   More importantly, it is nice to have some news about A.I. that is benign rather than threatening. For a good example of the latter see this piece which relates to the potential harm that A.I. may do to the children, before it gets around to destroying the rest of us: 
   "What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?:The tech world assumes that A.I.-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite, Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, April 23, 2026. It begins this way:
   "I don’t like A.I., and I am raising my children not to like it. I’ve been telling them for years now that chatbots are manipulative and dangerous, that A.I. image generators are loosening our collective grip on reality, that large language models are built atop industrial-scale intellectual-property theft. At times, I find myself speaking with my kids about A.I. in the same terms that we might discuss a creepy neighbor who lives down the block: avoid eye contact, cross the street when you walk past his house, and, when in doubt, call on a trusted adult....Somehow, I was not prepared for the creepy neighbor to start hanging around my kids’ schools; somehow, I thought we had until high school."

More London Tidbits

Forest City Facts
   Local citizens will be able to get London information from sources more creditable than Mulcahy's Miscellany. According to the article above, "The project will feature 200 short historical facts displayed along the Thames Valley Parkway, in green spaces, community centres and at events throughout the city during the bicentennial year." The complete article is found in the London Free Press, May 14, 2026.
   Many of the facts and placards have already been produced and about 200 are expected by the end of the bicentennial year. So far, MM has provided fourteen snippets and more are planned. I will continue to search for some and hope they supplement, rather than duplicate the ones found on the Forest City placards. 

  The London & Middlesex Historical Society is one of the groups involved in this project and a member of the Society, Dan Brock, is publishing a new book with the title: Chronological Saga of The London and Middlesex Historical Society: 125 Amazing Years. For more information, see the website of the LMHS.

May May Be The Cruellest Month

 More Weather Drama 
  Happy Victoria Day! We had a cool and cloudy April and just finally experienced a warm and sunny day, and another one is predicted. The forecast also calls for complaints with which we will be deluged. They have already begun, even though it is warm, not hot. 

Try to make it through another excruciating day if you can. That's it. I have said enough about this subject. See, for example, The Human Suffering Index. 

Post Script:
   For those of you south of our border, 22°Celsius is about 72°Fahrenheit, but up here it feels like  it's 90 F. 

Beautiful Campuses

    The news related to colleges and universities is mostly of the bad kind these days. It is spring, however,  in some parts of the world (but not yet in Ontario), where blossoms are in bloom and commencement speeches are sprouting on campuses which are often attractive oases. So, let's focus on them.
   Take a break from the bad news and enjoy visiting these institutions of higher education which are described as some of the "most stunning college campuses in the world." Two are located in Canada.

39 Beautiful Campuses

1.Flagler College, Florida
2. Trinity College, Dublin
3. The University of the South, Tennessee
4. Queen’s University, Ireland
5. Princeton University, New Jersey
6. Cornell University, New York
7. Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
8. University of Colorado at Boulder
9. Royal Roads University, British Columbia
10. University of San Diego, California
11. University of London, England
12. Furman University, South Carolina
13. University of Cambridge, England
14. Kenyon College, Ohio
15. Harvard University, Massachusetts
16. University of Edinburgh, Scotland
17. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
18. Notre Dame University, Indiana
19. University of Oxford, England
20. Pepperdine University, California
21. University of Bologna, Italy
22. University of British Columbia, Vancouver
23. University of Capetown, South Africa
24. University of Chicago, Illinois
25. University of Glasgow, Scotland
26. University of Hawaii at Manoa
27. University of Otago, New Zealand
28. University of Virginia, Virginia
29. Stanford University, California
30. University of Sydney, Australia
31. Yale University, Connecticut
32. The College of William & Mary, Virginia
33. University of Queensland, Australia
34. Villanova University, Pennsylvania
35. University of Cincinnati, Ohio
36. University of Coimbra, Portugal
37. College of Charleston, South Carolina
38. Tsinghua University, China
39. University of Washington, Washington

Sources:
   This list is from: "The 39 Most Stunning College Campuses in the World: If We Had to do Undergrad Over Again, We'd Enroll Here," Korin Miller, House Beautiful, April 1, 2026. Both pictures are from the article and there are more. The top one is of Royal Roads and the bottom is of the library at Trinity College, Dublin.
   I was led to that article by this one: "Two Canadian Universities Ranked Most Beautiful College Campuses in the World," Daniel Chai, Daily Hive. Apr 11 2026.
   "Studying at university is hard work, which is why it’s important to schedule in breaks from the books while you’re on campus. For those attending two Canadian universities on a new list of the most stunning college campuses in the world, you’ll find plenty of beautiful spaces to recharge....
   "The ranking, recently published by interior decorating magazine House Beautiful, named Royal Roads University in Victoria and the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the top 25.
   According to House Beautiful, the campuses on the list are remarkable in every sense.
   “They offer far more than academic spaces—they foster creativity, inspiration, and a rich cultural atmosphere that enhances student life,” said author Korin Miller.
   “We’ve searched far and wide, even reaching destinations like Australia, to showcase some of the most visually striking universities worldwide.”
   Royal Roads University cracked the top 10 in ninth spot, with the Hatley Park National Historic Site described as “pretty incredible.”
“The rest of campus does not disappoint, with 642 acres of vibrant greenery and spectacular views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the exotic Japanese Garden.”  
   UBC landed in 22nd place on the list of the most stunning college campuses in the world, with its access to both mountains and beaches being a top reason."

   If you are impressed that Royal Roads occupies 642 acres, you will be more impressed by the 27,000 acres in Georgia that contain Berry College. If you go to the bottom of that post you will learn that Sewanee (No.3, The University of the South) sits in "The Domain" which consists of 13,000 acres. Since you are unlikely to do that, I will provide the two additional references you would have found there: "America's Most Beautiful College Campuses," Travel + Leisure, June 24, 2021.  See also: "South's Most Beautiful Colleges 2020," by Jennifer Chappell Smith, Southern Living, Sept. 11, 2020.

   If you think retiring and relocating to be near such places would be a good thing see, "University Retirement Communities."   There is a new retirement community for old people at Berry College - The Spires at Berry College - and here is their description:
"Celebrated as “America’s most beautiful college campus” and nestled alongside pristine Eagle Lake at the foot of Lavender Mountain, our location at Berry College is without question a picturesque place to retire. Even better, this incredible lakeside sanctuary serves as the setting for senior living that feels every bit as good as it looks."
   Western University is still a beautiful place, but not quite as beautiful as UWO was. I just hope the Pawpaw Trees planted there, survive our very cold spring. 

The Bonus: UBC (No.22) is also known as, The University of Beautiful Cars. 

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 13)

    I have been away for a bit and slow to resume blogging. I am lacking in the creative energy required for even the most mundane of posts and am not lacking in other things that I should be doing instead. Still the resumption will be attempted and I will begin with another London item and you will now have been given a baker's dozen of them. 

  This one occurred just over one hundred years ago when two men were hanged in London on the same day in 1924 and the report is found in the Casper Daily Tribune (Wyoming). Mr. Murrell killed someone while robbing a bank in Melbourne. Mr. Topping murdered his girlfriend.

The Bonus:
   Since I don't feel like doing those other things mentioned, I will offer here an editorial comment since it is a "reactionary" one that I would prefer go unnoticed. Perhaps we should bring back hanging as a punishment. That sounds harsh, but I am not advocating hanging all criminals, just those who are guilty of crimes, such as stealing from public institutions, as opposed to private corporations, where more leniency could be justified. 
  Given that this is a London snippet, here is an example from London:
"Alleged fraud worth $60M uncovered at London Health Sciences Centre,".
   "An audit has uncovered a decade-long fraud at the region's largest hospital network with the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) filing two separate lawsuits implicating five former executives, a contractor and companies hired to do work.
   The lawsuits total more than $60 million and allege that some executives knew about the scheme and did nothing to stop it. One of the lawsuits also links more than 60 "suspicious properties" worth almost $20M to three people involved in the alleged scheme, purchased after multi-million dollar contracts were awarded by the hospital....
"The Fraudulent Scheme was a calculated, multi-year campaign of deceit and theft, deliberately engineered to misappropriate public funds for personal and unlawful gain," the lawsuit that was filed Wednesday alleges."

  It was announced more recently that 288 Registered Nurses at the LHSC were going to be laid off, a not unrelated development. 

  Admittedly, hanging is a bit harsh for our time, but perhaps we could at least bring back the pillory and erect a few of them at the intersection of Wellington and Commissioners where the guilty could be displayed for a very long time and even in the winter. 
Sources:
  The article quoted above is by Kate Dubinski, CBC News, July 9, 2025.
  For more about hangings in London see "Hanging Days" by the late Christopher Doty. 
  For more about hanging generally, see "The Gibbet".

Blake Whiting - The Author - Does Not Exist

   I am still in the Comox Valley which is why I have not been doing much blogging. There are many better things to do, but it is cloudy this morning so I will produce something for those who are eagerly awaiting more prose from me, and for a few others who may be mildly curious about whether I still exist. I will finally get back to the subject of books.
   If the title has prompted you to search for "Blake Whiting", you will have found a baseball player and a lawyer and likely an obituary-or-two. You will not have found anything about the prolific author of the many books found on Amazon and elsewhere which appear under that name. Here are some samples from goodreads and more can be found on Amazon.

   I also have not been doing much reading while roaming around Vancouver Island, but I did notice an article and it is worth calling to your attention. If you are not interested in books, I will mention Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is the actual author of the books supposedly written by Blake Whiting. Who is behind Blake Whiting directing AI queries is not known at this point. Basically if one chooses a subject and a few books and articles related to it, AI can absorb the material and produce something which is not exactly plagiarism, nor is the resulting book actually  a 'new' one about the topic. It is best not to buy these books which are compiled from the work of real authors. Regard them as coal mine canaries since many more by other 'authors' will soon be available.

Source:
  "Who Is Blake Whiting?: The Most Astonishingly Productive Historian in Recent Times is Someone You’ll Never Meet," by Andrew Lawler, The American Scholar, April 16, 2026.
   "No living American historian is as prolific as Blake Whiting. In one week alone last fall, he published 13 books on a host of complex archaeological and historical subjects, ranging from the collapse of Near Eastern civilizations in 1177 BCE to the recent discovery of a huge Silk Road–era city in Central Asia.
   Amazon sells his hardbacks for $28.99, the paperbacks for $20.99, and the Kindle versions for a bargain $7.99. What you can’t buy from Amazon at any price, however, is Blake Whiting’s CV. Though the books claim to be copyrighted in his name, you won’t find an author picture or bio, nor will you find his website or Instagram. He does not belong to the faculty of any college or university, and he is unknown to those academics he cites in his books—which are not actually copyrighted.
   Whiting, as you have guessed, is neither historian nor human. His fake persona is harbinger of an alarming trend threatening disaster to academics and journalists alike.
   I know this all too well; I am a science and history author who has published extensively on many of the subjects covered in Whiting’s books. I have written magazine features that have been clearly reshuffled, reorganized, and supplemented with other freely available material to masquerade as the unique work of “Blake Whiting.” This is not plagiarism in the old-fashioned sense, in which a few sentences or paragraphs are lifted from a previously published work. This is word-laundering on a truly industrial scale, aided and abetted by one of the world’s largest corporations. Using AI tools and a pseudonym, unknown culprits are now profiting from my work and that of my colleagues."

London's Bicentennial (Snippet 12)

    It is a chilly morning out here in Courtenay, B.C., so I will attempt to post a short post about an astronaut who was born in London and is now safely back on earth.

JEREMY HANSEN
  There has been plenty of local news about Hansen, but here is an article about him from an American source.  And to add even more CANCON, the piece is written by Mike Neufeld, an Albertan.

“Jeremy R. Hansen: First Canadian In Deep Space."
  From a blog post "Smithsonian Voices” linked in the Smithsonian Magazine, March 31, 2026.
   "Born in 1976 in London, Ontario, Jeremy Hansen cannot remember a time when he did not dream of being an astronaut. And now, as member of the crew of Artemis 2, he will see the far side of the Moon as they loop around it.
   During Hansen’s youth, it became increasingly possible to imagine a Canadian doing such a thing. Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space in 1984, when he flew on STS-41G as a payload specialist. NASA had made that seat available because the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) provided the Canadarm Remote Manipulator System for the Space Shuttle. Garneau flew two more missions as a mission specialist after NASA allowed non-Americans to join new astronaut classes. Other Canadians served on Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) crews, most memorably when Chris Hadfield commanded the station in 2013. For that program, CSA contributed Canadarm2, a more advanced, double-ended remote manipulator system with a mobile base.
   Hansen followed a classic path to the astronaut corps—he became a fighter pilot.  Growing up on a farm near the mid-size city of London, Ontario, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets at age 12. He earned his glider wings at age 16 and his pilot license at 17, which set his path to becoming an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force (he is now a colonel). His eyes still set on space exploration, he graduated in 1999 from the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada’s primary service academy, with a bachelor of science in space science. He added an master of science in physics there in 2000, with a thesis on satellite tracking. After completing jet training on the CF-18 (a Canadian version of the McDonnell-Douglas F-18 Hornet), Hansen served from 2004-2009 in squadrons in Cold Lake, Alberta, that were part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)....
   When NASA asked CSA to nominate someone for the Canadian seat, Jeremy Hansen was the obvious and logical candidate. (Jenni Gibbons, from my hometown of Calgary, is his backup.) He will be not only the first Canadian to fly into deep space, but he will also be the first from any nation other than the United States. No human has left low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. If all goes well, he will enjoy a spectacular view and help pioneer the human return to the Moon. It’s a fitting assignment for someone who has dreamed of going there since he was a small boy."

   The author of the piece above is also worth noting. There is a Wikipedia entry about him, from which the following was borrowed. 
   "Neufeld was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1951. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Calgary, and a Master of Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1976 with his thesis "He who will not work, neither shall he eat": German social democratic attitudes to labor, 1890-1914. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1984 with the dissertation "From artisans to workers: the transformation of the skilled metalworkers of Nuremberg, 1835-1905....."
Since the 1990s, Neufeld has written several works about Wernher von Braun.
  For the rationale for these London snippets see the first one: 
London's Bicentennial (1826-2026)

The Bonus:
  Here are some remarks from the astronauts after they returned: 

  Ms. Koch talked about what the word “crew” meant to her now — “a group that is in it all the time, no matter what” — and about how, when she looked at Earth from the neighborhood of the moon, it “was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.”

She concluded, “There’s one new thing I know, and that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew.”

Mr. Hansen said that, if people liked how the Artemis II astronauts worked together, that joy was something everyone could share.

   “I would suggest to you that, when you look up here, you’re not looking at us,” he said. “We are a mirror reflecting you. And if you like what you see, then just look a little deeper.”

from:

"Artemis II Crew Reunites With Families and Fellow NASA Astronauts: The four astronauts made an emotional return to Houston a day after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their 10-day lunar journey," Kenneth Chang, April 11, 2026, New York Times. 

London Bicentennial (Snippet 11)

   I am currently travelling and don't have time for one of my thoughtful and deep philosophical posts. So, as a substitute, another snippet is provided about London, which is 200 this year.

The Oldest Baseball Park
   Is not in the United States. It is Labatt Memorial Park in London, Ontario. The colonizers started playing baseball here in 1877, just a little over fifty years after the trees were cut down and the ground broken along the Thames River.  Since I live in London and know one of the people responsible for the authentication of this historical fact, and since the people here in London know and brag about this 'first', I will simply supply the sources you need for validation.
  You can begin with the Wikipedia entry, "Labatt Park."  The park pictured above has its own website: "Labatt Memorial Park."
   The photo provided above is from Aimee Grace and it is found in an article by Thomas Vesey which is in the Mar. 27, 2026 issue of the Western Gazette. (The Gazette is a student publication at Western University in London.) Here's more:
"Inside the World's Oldest Baseball Grounds".
   "It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball, especially at Labatt Memorial Park, the oldest continually used ballpark in the world, which first opened in 1877...."
   "The London Tecumsehs, a former men’s professional baseball team, first built the field, then known as Tecumseh Park. The Tecumsehs were one of the oldest professional baseball teams in Canada and helped bring organized baseball to Ontario. 
   Robert Barney is a sports historian specializing in the Olympics and 19th-century baseball. He has studied Labatt Park and has helped prove the authenticity of its history during his time at Western University.
   “Labatt Park is the oldest baseball grounds in history. No other baseball grounds in the world are older than Labatt Park, and so the authentication of that has been my biggest episode because it had a challenger,” says Barney. 
   The challenger Barney references is Fuller Field in Clinton, Massachusetts. Fuller Field was built and began operations in 1878, one year after Labatt Park....
   The London Majors — who play in the Canadian Baseball League — and Western Mustangs baseball teams have called the park home since 1925 and 2006, respectively.  
   Now, nearly 150 years after its first games were played, Labatt Memorial Park continues to serve as it did in 1877, bringing people together through community and baseball."

   It is fitting that "Labatt" is a brewer, which began in London in 1847. It does not appear that the hot dog was invented here, however, and I am not sure when one was first served in Labatt Park. 
   I just thought to check the ultimate arbiter these days and when asked, "Where is the oldest baseball field?" AI responded, "Labattt Memorial Park in London, Ontario, Canada".