csziggy
csziggy's Journal‘Who Do You Think You Are’ Heads to TLC
The cabler has ordered eight hourlong episodes of the family history reality skein and will begin bowing the segs on July 23. Fresh run on cable will include celebs like Christina Applegate, Cindy Crawford, Zooey Dechanel and Chris O’Donnell delving into their lineage with the help of ancestry and history experts.
Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky direct and exec produce the series.
“I’ve never stopped hearing about how much people love ‘Who Do You Think You Are?,’ and I’ve always known that we’ve had more great stories to share,” said Kudrow.
http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/who-do-you-think-you-are-heads-to-tlc-1200486284/
DU pilots - need help identifying some old planes **DIALUP WARNING**
I'm scanning a photo album from my Dad's family. The album starts in 1916 and I am up to 1939. There are two groups with airplanes but with no identifying information as to exactly when and where they were taken. My Dad and uncle could be among the boys in front of the plane.
The first picture of a plane was from a series taken at an airfield. Most of the shots were of this plane. There is at least one other plane but that photo is so bad I am not posting it - the photos are tiny, about 1.5 square. I'm scanning them at 1200 dpi to get them big enough to really look at.
The photos were taken between 1934 and 1938 (years from the photos before and after). There is a possibility this airplane was associated with the Chicago Exposition of 1934-35 - pictures on the same page of the album were of electrical arcs with the name "General Electric" visible. Here's the first photo:
The other pictures I'm posting here are of a crashed plane. Again, no information, but the photos were around 1938. The location is most likely Polk County, Florida, but it could be Upper Peninsula Michigan during a summer visit or just about anywhere. There is one shot on that page of the album that could not have been taken in Florida - a rocky outcrop that could not be Florida geology. Another shot shows what happened to the missing wing - it is in pieces hanging from the tree the plane is next to.
Any information on these planes would be great! Thanks in advance!
Maps reveal owners of lands taken by Cromwell {Ireland}
A staggering collection of maps assembled in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) will reveal the exact ownership of the lands that were plundered from Irish families and given to landlords during the Cromwellian Plantation of 1670.
"We have never been able to do it to this level before – parish by parish, barony by barony, county by county," says TCD historian Professor Michael O Siochru of the 'Down Survey' map website, which will be unveiled tomorrow.
"If you are going to redistribute lands, then the first thing you have to do is map it and that is what happened," said Prof O Siochru, who is associate professor of Modern History at TCD.
"So the land survey – the first of its kind in the world – was carried out on Cromwell's orders.
"The results are amazingly accurate for the time."
More: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/maps-reveal-owners-of-lands-taken-by-cromwell-29259859.html
The Down Survey website: http://www.downsurvey.tcd.ie/
The skink is under the refrigerator!
Not something you expect to hear - and my husband had to have me repeat it. Yesterday I saw a skink in the library. Just now I saw a tail disappear under the refrigerator.
He is probably a broad headed skink:
http://www.wildflorida.com/wildlife/lizards/Broad-headed_Skink.php
I have no idea how he got inside, but if he'll eat the silverfish in the library and the cockroaches in the kitchen, he's welcome to stay!
Today seems to be wildlife day around here. While calling Mom to wish her Happy Mother's Day, I saw a fox squirrel out in the pasture. It's been years since I've seen one up here at the top of the hill!
http://www.wildflorida.com/wildlife/mammals/Fox_Squirrel.php
(Not my pictures.)
Errors Afflict More Checks Issued to Aid Homeowners
The company the big banks hired to recompense homeowners for mortgage abuses can't seem to get its act together. First it sent out checks without putting money into the account to cover them. Now it's sending out checks for incorrect amounts. Is this incompetence or willful bad acts?
By BEN PROTESS and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
May 8, 2013, 3:35 pm 8:58 p.m. | Updated
Three weeks after checks sent to homeowners as compensation for foreclosure abuses were rejected for insufficient funds, the consulting firm at the center of the mishap erred again: a fresh round of checks was written for the wrong amounts.
In recent days, according to officials briefed on the matter, Rust Consulting issued nearly 100,000 checks for less than the homeowners were owed. The mistake potentially cheated consumers out of millions of dollars they were owed under a deal reached between the government and the nation’s biggest banks.
Federal regulators ordered Rust to fix its mistake. And in a statement, Rust said late Wednesday that it had “corrected the error and plans to mail supplemental checks to affected borrowers as soon as May 17.” It attributed the mistake to a “clerical error.”
But the developments cast another harsh spotlight on Rust, which had been selected as the distributor of checks for the $3.6 billion settlement deal that regulators struck with the banks. The continued problems with Rust also raised questions about the government’s oversight of the firm and the wisdom of hiring it in the first place.
More: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/in-latest-foreclosure-glitch-some-checks-come-up-short/
