My Word with Douglas E. Welch

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An interesting link found among my daily reading

Watch this classic from the very beginning of film. — Douglas

 

Released on September 15th, 1914. Sometimes called the world’s oldest cartoon (erroneously), it is still the first to be created using keyframe animation. This movie required Winsor McCay and his assistant John A. Fitzsimmons (who traced the backgrounds) to create 10,000 drawings, which they inked on rice paper and mounted on cardboard.

Gertie is a dinosaur based on the Brontosaurus (nowadays known as Apatosaurus) skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History. McCay’s employer, William Randolph Hearst, was displeased with McCay’s success outside of the newspapers, and used his contractual power to reduce McCay’s stage activities.

Sinkholes form through both natural and human-made processes.

Most of us think about erosion on the surface of the earth, but erosion can occur in the subsurface as well. In fact, scientist and engineers have a very creative name for just such a process: internal erosion. If just the right factors come together in the subsurface, some very interesting things can occur, including sinkholes.

 

Puppets—they’re child’s play, right? Spend five minutes watching Barnaby Dixon and you’ll surely disagree. At first, it might seem strange for a 26-year-old to be hand-building puppets in his bedroom and shooting videos of his performances for a living, but the puppet prodigy’s creations are completely original and totally addicting to watch. Barnaby started his career solely to make YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/user/barnabyd…), but recently hit it big after winning a 50,000 Euro grand prize on the German puppet talent show, “Die Puppenstars.”

I regularly watch these Gresham College lectures on a variety of topics — probably around 3-4 lectures a month, depending on the topics. Lectures like this have been by own version of a Master’s Degree, since I am not that fond of classroom learning. With each lecture, you gain quite a deep understanding of the topic at hand and often there are 3-5 lectures that follow a theme over the course of few months. — Douglas

Gresham College was founded in 1597 and has been providing free lectures within the City of London for over 400 years.

The College was established out of the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, one of the most influential and important men across the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. Sir Thomas made himself indispensable as the financial agent for four successive monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. As well as founding the Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas left proceeds in his will for the foundation of Gresham College.

 

This lecture re-examines how the First World War ended. Why did Germany request a ceasefire and why did the Allies and America grant one?

A lecture by Professor David Stevenson, London School of Economics
07 November 2018 6pm (UK time)
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an…

Audio, Video, Transcript and Slides are available on the Gresham College web site.

This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended, anticipating the centenary commemorations in 2018. It will discuss both why Germany requested a ceasefire, and why the Allies and America granted one. It will argue that the German army was near collapse, and that Germany was not defeated by a ‘stab in the back’ at home. None the less, the Allies had good reasons not to press on to Berlin.

An amazing natural process. Yes, we are anthropomorphizing it, but it is still cool! — Douglas