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Major Activities
Occupational Information System Project
Occupational Information System Project
In this chapter, we draw some tentative conclusions based on the early evaluation data presented in the report. We also highlight some implications of the findings and identify several issues that deserve close attention as the TTW program continues to unfold. In particular, while TTW is now operational, several pressure points could limit its effectiveness. SSA has already taken some steps to address those points, but careful monitoring is essential during the next few months and additional steps are likely to be required. Given that TTW is a program that was implemented from scratch without a pilot or demonstration and is still in its infancy, operational problems are hardly surprising.
Despite substantial obstacles, SSA has, in fact, implemented TTW in the Phase 1 and 2 states and began to roll out the program in the remaining (Phase 3) states as of November 2003. Although the rollout is a year behind schedule, that is not surprising given the Agency's resource limitations, the enormity of the task facing SSA in implementing a national program that proved to be much more complex than initially understood when the original schedule was developed, a change of administrations, and other external events. The Ticket concept as envisioned by the NASI panel and enacted by Congress appears simple, but it overlies a set of already complex rules and systems associated with the work incentive provisions of SSA's two disability programs. Moreover, the legislation left those provisions largely unchanged. In addition, SSA had to address the interests of a wide variety of stakeholders through the regulatory process and other administrative actions.
In the process of implementing TTW, SSA has made substantial operational changes that are likely to support beneficiary efforts to return to work. The mailing of Tickets to over 5 million adult beneficiaries in the Phase 1 and 2 states represents the first time that SSA has invited most of these beneficiaries to obtain employment services potentially funded by SSA. This approach stands in contrast to past policy, under which SSA invited and required a small share of new awardees to seek rehabilitation services through SVRAs and did not directly extend an offer of assistance to others. For the first time, beneficiaries can attempt to work without fear of triggering a medical CDR. It appears that TTW has substantially expanded beneficiary ability to seek services from non–SVRA providers who could then be paid for the rehabilitation by SSA without a referral, that beneficiaries have better access to information about SSA's work incentive programs through the Benefits Planning Assistance Outreach (BPAO) grantees, and that providers have better knowledge of how returning to work will affect client benefits.1 has taken and continues to take other actions that are designed to improve access to information on work issues. It has provided extensive training of field office staff; developing work incentive specialist positions in each SSA area; training a liaison to the area specialist in each field office to support beneficiary access to work information; and collaborating with the U.S. Department of Labor to establish disability program navigators at One-Stop Career centers.
SSA has also made improvements to its basic systems that seem likely to facilitate beneficiaries' return-to-work efforts. Some of these improvements address long-standing issues, and it is possible that, even without TTW, the changes would have improved beneficiary employment outcomes and reduced dependence on benefits. New software, new data systems, and other enhancements in SSA procedures should help reduce overpayments and retroactive terminations, speed Ticket eligibility verification, provide timely information about use of the Trial Work Period, and speed payments to providers. SSA administrators have recently accorded high priority to process such post-entitlement work and have budgeted more resources to that effort.
The various changes extend beyond the walls of SSA, most obviously to SVRAs. Ticket implementation has clearly focused SVRA attention on disability beneficiaries, made the agencies aware of SSA's desire to reduce dependence on benefits through increased earnings, and motivated the agencies to pay more attention to the consequences of increased earnings for benefits. A few SVRAs have even taken what can be viewed as positive steps to promote the development of the EN market.
Reliance on TTW is lower than hoped for at this stage. The best evidence comes from Phase 1 states, where rollout was completed in November 2002 (see Chapter IV). Nine months later (August 2003), the assignment rate was only 0.74 percent, although it continues to rise. In addition, 91 percent of Tickets were assigned to SVRAs and the share of Tickets assigned under the new payment systems was particularly low (3 percent for outcomes-only and 11 percent for milestone-outcome system) and declining (see Chapter IV). The experience in Phase 2 states, where rollout ended in September 2003, appears to be similar to the experience of Phase 1 states in the comparable period.
Provider participation in TTW has also been much lower than predicted. Although over 700 providers have signed up to be ENs in the Phase 1 and 2 states, only about 250 have accepted Ticket assignments (Chapter III). Payments to ENs with Tickets are thus far noticeably low, and, among the very few ENs that had accepted several Tickets, many were in various stages of contracting or leaving the market (Chapters III and V). No EN we have talked to thus far appears to be making money on its TTW activities, and the SVRAs continue to dominate the market for employment services to eligible beneficiaries.
It is important to note that some groups of eligible beneficiaries are participating at much higher rates than others. For the Phase 1 states, the participation rate in August 2003 was 1 percent for those who received their Tickets in the first rollout mailing (February 2002), 2 percent for those under age 40, 4.4 percent for those classified as having a severe hearing impairment, and over 1 percent in four states, including 1.9 percent in Delaware. Similarly, some groups are more likely than others to use the new payment systems. Variation by state is particularly wide-ranging—from a high of 45 percent of assignments using the new payment options in Arizona to a low of just 5 percent in South Carolina. We also find greater use of ENs funded through new payment systems by older beneficiaries and by those whose impairments are associated with medical conditions that increase in prevalence with age.
It is too early to know whether TTW, as currently designed, can achieve all its goals. The evidence we have been able to collect to date clearly shows that implementation problems have reduced provider interest in the program.
SSA is attempting to address the major pressure points, that is, those issues that have been most detrimental to the program, and it is possible that changes already in place will stimulate provider and beneficiary interest. Most important, SSA has taken steps to simplify the documentation of earnings required to trigger Ticket payments and to improve the timeliness of payments once evidence is submitted. It has also taken steps to reduce backlogs in post-entitlement workloads that have made confirmation of Ticket eligibility and adjudication of EN claims for payment problematic, and it recently launched a significant beneficiary outreach effort as well as an effort to help providers find other sources of funding to support their operations. Whether these steps will prove sufficient to enable TTW to achieve its goals cannot be determined until more data become available. However, it appears that SSA must continue to address these pressure points aggressively if the program is to succeed.
One important issue demanding consideration is the continued dominance of SVRAs in the employment services market for beneficiaries. Even though TTW has clearly expanded choice for beneficiaries, most Tickets have been assigned to SVRAs under the traditional payment system. The dominance of SVRAs appears to be inconsistent with the objective of developing a competitive market for beneficiary services. If SSA wants to increase competition it will have to work with the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) to develop new ways to involve both SVRAs and ENs in the TTW program.
One key issue is the general policy of most SVRAs to not provide services to beneficiaries that have already assigned their Ticket to an EN, except under an agreement in which the EN would compensate the agency. This policy has been adopted on the grounds that the Rehabilitation Act prevents the agencies from providing Title I vocational rehabilitation services to individuals who are receiving comparable services from other organizations. While the legal debate over this interpretation is continuing, implications of changing the policy are fairly clear. Making SVRA services available to EN clients, without compensation from the EN, would substantially increase the value to the beneficiary of assigning a Ticket to an EN if the beneficiary currently resides in a state with an agency that refuses to provide services without reimbursement. It would also mean, however, that SVRAs would provide more services to beneficiaries without the possibility of reimbursement from SSA.
Still another important issue is the extent to which agreements between SVRAs and ENs vary among states. In particular, the agreements differ in the extent to which they encourage EN participation in TTW. To address this issue SSA and RSA could provide guidance to SVRAs and ENs on the terms of SVRA/EN agreements, or even promulgate new regulations on these agreements. As previously discussed, these agreements describe the conditions under which a SVRA will provide services to a beneficiary when the beneficiary is referred by the EN for services, and cover subjects such as referral procedures, payment terms and schedules, and dispute resolution. In all instances we know of, the SVRA has developed a single SVRA/EN agreement, often with minimal input from ENs and other stakeholders, and has required the EN to sign the agreement prior to referring a Ticket holder to the state agency. In most agreements we have reviewed the SVRA shares some of the risk with the EN, but the financial terms tend to be highly favorable to the state agency. As an alternative, SVRAs could help capitalize ENs, and foster the EN market, by sharing more of the risk. SSA and RSA could collaborate to develop risk-sharing models, and encourage their adoption. The federal agencies could also develop regulations that specify risk-sharing provisions for the VR/EN agreements. Such regulations could be viewed as a compromise between the two extreme positions on the issue of whether beneficiaries who assign their Tickets to ENs are still entitled to receive state VR agency services under Title I of the Rehabilitation Act.
A recent letter from the Ticket to Work and Work Incentive Advisory Panel (2003) raised the issue of beneficiary choice and asked SSA and RSA to reassess policies about the ways in which SVRAs can take Tickets. Under Transmittal 17 of the Social Security Provider's Handbook, distributed in September 2002, an SVRA can receive a Ticket assignment by transmitting a signed Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) and an unsigned copy of SSA Form 1365 (which SVRAs use to register a beneficiary's Ticket with SSA). The policy has caused considerable concern on the part of both SVRAs and ENs. Even though several SVRAs have developed procedures to ensure that beneficiaries are fully aware of the potential consequences of signing an IPE, the policy may, in practice, allow SVRA to receive assignments from beneficiaries who may not even know they have a Ticket, who may be unaware they have assigned their Ticket, or who may be unaware of the consequences of Ticket assignment. Some SVRAs have expressed concern about this provision, indicating that the policy seems to conflict with the consumer choice provisions of the Rehabilitation Act. At the same time, some ENs have argued that the guidance gives SVRAs an unfair advantage and limits ENs' ability to recruit and serve beneficiaries. Requiring SVRAs to obtain a signed Form 1365 might increase beneficiary assignments to ENs, although we have no evidence that a substantial increase would occur.
The issue of the relationships between SVRAs and ENs is part of an even larger issue concerning the ability of ENs to co-mingle funds from TTW with funds they receive from other public and private sources. As noted in Chapter III, some providers are refraining from serving Ticket holders because they believe that their funding from other sources (for example, Medicaid) will be jeopardized by Ticket to Work revenue. The essential question is whether it was Congressional intent for the Ticket to Work program to make beneficiaries ineligible for the full range of Title I VR services, Medicaid, or other supports provided by the many programs for which beneficiaries might be eligible, by making them eligible for EN services under Ticket to Work? Or is it the legislative intent for the TTW program to provide additional and longer-term funding for beneficiaries who often require ongoing and intensive supports to maintain employment? The issue of whether TTW should be viewed as substitute or complementary funding has not been adequately addressed by SSA, and is inhibiting the ability of providers to serve Ticket holders. While it appears that SSA has not yet been able to provide clear policy guidance on the issue, it is certainly not an issue that SSA can address alone. This will require working in collaboration with other federal entities providing funding for services to people with disabilities, and may also require clarification by Congress on the fundamental intent of the legislation.
Beyond the pressure point issues discussed above, the TTW performance is likely to be affected by the downturn in the economy. As the evaluation proceeds, we will pay careful attention to the extent to which local economic conditions affect the extent to which TTW influences beneficiaries' employment, earnings, and benefit receipt. It is essential that SSA understand how well TTW works in different economic environments so that it can make accurate projections of program costs and effects on the beneficiary rolls.
The economic downturn might have affected the program in several ways. The most obvious is that the downturn has reduced the number of job vacancies and increased competition for those positions that remain. Other possible effects are subtler. A poor economy tends to reduce state budgets, with the result that state funds that might otherwise have helped support beneficiary return-to-work efforts are less likely to be available. State Medicaid programs, which have seen states tighten eligibility requirements and reduce coverage (Smith et al. 2003), provide a clear example. Beneficiaries also are likely facing greater competition from others for state employment and other support services. Some SVRAs we interviewed for the study reported cuts in state funding. Some ENs might be facing financial difficulties for reasons related to the economy but unrelated to TTW, making it harder for them to finance their entry into TTW.
We can reasonably conclude that TTW, as initially implemented, has had, at most, extremely small effects on beneficiary exits due to work. We base our conclusion on the fact that overall participation rates in TTW are still noticeably low, that most beneficiaries who use Tickets are served by the traditional payment system, and that only a few payments have been made to TTW providers. Thus, TTW has yet to have a dramatic effect on beneficiaries' service use patterns, although Ticket's effects may be felt if the economy rebounds and as SSA continues to improve TTW operations. In addition, greater effects may materialize over time as we begin to see the full effect of efforts to educate beneficiaries about their work options and opportunities.
Although TTW, as currently designed, has not yet existed long enough for us to reach judgments about its success, more fundamental changes to the program's design, or to the work incentive features of the DI and SSI programs, could be required if substantial increases in beneficiary earnings and reduced reliance on income support are ever to be realized. A major issue to consider would be how to increase potential providers' interest in participating in the program.
The obvious ways to increase ENs' interest would be to increase the size of the networks' payments and to restructure payments for earlier receipt. Depending on how ENs and beneficiaries respond, such changes might either increase or reduce total disability program costs (i.e., benefit payments plus Ticket payments). Payment increases beyond some point will increase total program costs for the simple reason that benefit reductions have a finite limit. Although the intent of the Ticket Act is to reduce or at least not increase total program costs, an increase in TTW costs might--from a broad societal point of view--be optimal given potential impacts on costs for other programs (such as Medicaid and Medicare) and the value of increased income to the beneficiary, among other things.2 We do not, however, have any empirical evidence on the extent to which any given change would result in greater provider participation, greater beneficiary interest, or more desirable employment and program outcomes.
Another approach to increasing EN interest would be to take steps to reduce or eliminate SVRA use of the traditional payment system. Currently, the system is available only to SVRAs, most of which appear to have a strong preference for continuing use of this system rather than use of the new payment system. Limiting or eliminating use of the traditional system would encourage the SVRAs to rely on the new payment system. Such a change would make it a little easier for ENs to compete with the SVRAs, although the agencies' Title 1 funding will continue to give them a strong competitive advantage. SSA could also consider changing the rules for the traditional payment system in ways that would link payments more closely to SSA's goal of increasing beneficiaries' self-sufficiency, not just their work activity.
Another change requiring consideration would be to modify Ticket payments so that providers were rewarded for increasing beneficiary productivity and reducing SSI payment for beneficiaries who work and receive partial benefits. Currently, outcome payments are not triggered unless beneficiaries stop receiving payments from both programs, but there are SSI recipients, including some who also receive DI, whose benefits are reduced but not eliminated when their earnings increase. The milestones payments give ENs some reward for helping beneficiaries reduce their benefits. Similarly, the traditional payment system rewards SVRAs that help beneficiaries earn above the substantial gainful activity level for at least nine months even if those beneficiaries remain on the rolls. A partial payment system for use by providers might be appropriate for SVRAs, perhaps even as a replacement for the traditional payment system. Partial payments that exceed benefit savings should perhaps also be considered on the grounds that increased beneficiary earnings have some value to society even if they are not fully offset by benefit savings.
It is clear that the work incentive provisions of both the SSI and DI programs directly conflict with providers' desires to generate Ticket payments. Many of the incentives allow beneficiaries to stay on the rolls while testing the employment waters (indefinitely for SSI), but TTW providers generally receive payment only when a beneficiary no longer receives benefit payments. ENs that help beneficiaries use the work incentives run the risk of not receiving payment for their efforts. Many providers we have talked to are acutely aware of this problem. It is also clear from evidence we have collected that the differences between the work incentive provisions of the two programs have added substantial complexity to TTW implementation. These differences make it difficult for SSA to integrate processes and data systems across the two programs and are a significant source of confusion to beneficiaries and providers alike. Depending how TTW plays out, SSA may eventually need to give serious consideration to redesigning the work incentive programs or the TTW program to resolve this conflict. This issue could be addressed in SSA's forthcoming Benefit Offset Demonstration for DI that would introduce a $1 for $2 benefit offset similar to that in the SSI program and could include special provisions for making TTW payments to providers that work with demonstration participants that use this new offset.
In considering any changes to the TTW program, it is important to be realistic about what TTW can achieve, even if payments were increased and work incentive provisions restructured. TTW is a program intended to improve employment outcomes for people who have passed a rigorous test to show that they cannot engage in substantial gainful activity. The severity of their impairments, combined with other personal characteristics, might make work an unrealistic option for some beneficiaries under any circumstances. Other individuals face environmental barriers and disincentives to work that would not be addressed by the work incentive programs, even under the best imaginable program configuration. Barriers and disincentives include possible reduction or loss of both income and in-kind benefits, the existence of a highly fragmented support system, lack of marketable skills, and employers' concerns about hiring or retaining those deemed unfit for gainful activity, regardless of whether such concerns are legitimate. The NASI panel that proposed the Ticket concept saw it as a way to help a small share of beneficiaries attain self-sufficiency through employment, with net savings to the disability programs—a small step forward. It seems likely that many other disincentives and barriers to employment will need to be addressed before it is possible for large numbers of beneficiaries to achieve self-sufficiency through employment.
In any event, changes should be made quickly in order to preserve the TTW program's current momentum. Participation rates were still rising through August 2003, the last month for which we have data, but ENs are continuing to drop out of the program. As a result, beneficiaries may face reduced choices and program enrollments may stagnate. The loss of momentum is not the end of TTW, but may make it harder to SSA to provide the choices and opportunities that TTW promises to beneficiaries.
1 This statement is based on the impressions left by several interviews of staff at SSA, the state VR agencies, and ENs. Conducting a rigorous evaluation of changes in beneficiary and provider knowledge and access to information will require the more detailed survey data that will be available in 2005. Return to text.
2On the grounds that marginal participants will increase their earnings from zero to the SGA level and that increased earnings represent a benefit to society in their entirety, Orr (2003) argues that payments should be roughly equal to SGA for DI beneficiaries. A similar line of reasoning leads to an even higher payment for SSI beneficiaries, after allowing for the effect of the Section 1619 benefit offset provisions. Return to text.


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Lynn Brennan: Restoring lost faith in humanity
Nearly every day since Thanksgiving, my newspaper has run a story a day highlighting the "Spirit of the Season" — a series of photos and stories showing the good that happens in our community around the Christmas season. Tens of thousands of dollars have been given to those in need. Gifts have been given to others anonymously. People all around town have opened their hearts and their wallets to help shine a little bit of light on someone else's Christmas.
I have done this series every year at various newspapers I have worked with. It is heart-warming and uplifting not only to the readers, but to us in the newsroom as well. In a business where we often find ourselves surrounded by negativity, every year I look forward to the month in December when I can focus on the good.
Thursday evening I spent a very enjoyable hour getting a private tour of the Lioness Club Christmas Light Display at Lions Club Park. As some of the finishing touches were put on the beautiful displays, I was told stories behind some of the scenes, and many of the most popular attractions were pointed out.
Friday I sat down to write down the story when a news alert popped up on my computer. There had been a shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Several were dead.
The numbers kept climbing until, by 3:30 p.m., the death toll had reached an unthinkable 28. Twenty of them innocent children.
It is very difficult to write a story focusing on Christmas cheer when there is so much heartbreak happening in a state I once called home.
I sat at my desk fighting back tears as visions passed through my head of 20 sets of presents, neatly wrapped under Christmas trees, that would never be opened. Of parents, who sent their children off to what should have been just another day of school, not knowing their lives would forever changed. Many other somber thoughts for what should be the happiest and most blessed time of the year raced through my head.
As many of us did, I opened my Facebook page to make a post of support for those going through hell in Connecticut.
The first post I saw shocked and disgusted me.
A post blaming the NRA, the Second Amendment and gun and bullet manufacturers for this terrible tragedy. However, not one word of blame fell on the only person responsible. The person who pulled the trigger.
The gunshots had barely stopped echoing in the halls of the elementary school and people were already playing the same blame game that happens every time one of these senseless acts occurs.
There is a time and a place for the volatile discussion over gun violence. This is not that time.
This is a time when we should be banding together, thinking about and praying for the victims of this tragedy in Connecticut, not arguing.
Events like these make many people, including myself question our faith in humanity.
A lot of love and joy was cruelly taken from the world Friday. A lot of lives were lost too soon. There is nothing any of us can do about that, but we are not helpless.
We can continue to live in the spirit of the season. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. Give your children an extra big hug next time you see them. Be charitable to others. A lot of small actions can go a long way in restoring our faith.
Lynn Brennan is the editor of the Rolla (Mo.) Daily News and be reached at email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


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SEATTLE — For all that Felix Hernandez has done in his career, pitching meaningful games in the final two months of the season has been a rarity.
With Seattle in the thick of the wild-card chase in the American League, Hernandez got the Mariners most anticipated home series since 2007 off to an electric start on Monday night.
Hernandez allowed one run in seven strong innings, extending his major league record streak, and Robinson Cano provided a jolt of run support as Seattle romped to an 11-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.
Hernandez twirled another gem, making his 16th straight start of at least seven innings while allowing two earned runs or less. Hernandez needed just 96 pitches to get through seven and his only mistake was Jose Bautista's solo home run in the fourth.
And he did it before a buzzing crowd of 41,168 as Seattle remained one game back in the chase for the second wild-card spot.
"That was unreal. That was pretty good," Hernandez said. "We're fighting. We're going to continue to fight and do the little things."
And for a change, Hernandez wasn't left wondering if Seattle would score enough.
Cano ignited a seven-run sixth inning with his 10th homer of the season for a 3-1 lead.
That was just the start. Mike Zunino followed with an RBI triple and an RBI double by Endy Chavez ended the night for Toronto starter Drew Hutchison (8-10).
Seattle's biggest inning since an eight-run outburst May 3 against Houston was just getting started. Brad Miller lined an RBI triple and Dustin Ackley brought home two runs with a single. Cano came up again, and after stepping out of the box while a lightning bolt and thunder crackled outside the stadium, just missed a second homer in the inning by inches with a RBI double off the wall.
"Everything I saw was away … so I was just trying to go the other way, but I wasn't trying to hit a homer," Cano said.
A day after going 19 innings to beat Detroit at home and not arriving to Seattle until 12:30 a.m. local time, Bautista's 23rd homer was the only highlight for Toronto. The only other Toronto batter to get a hit was Colby Rasmus, who had two and is now 7 for 10 against Hernandez.
King Felix struck out eight, walked none and lowered his ERA to 1.95 for the season. Hernandez is 9-2 with a 1.41 ERA during the 16-game streak.
"With Felix out there, you give those guys a lead they put it away," Toronto manager John Gibbons said.
Cano's heady fielding cut down a potential scoring opportunity for Toronto in the second. After Rasmus doubled, Dioner Navarro hit a grounder to second. Cano threw to third and got Rasmus trying to advance. Hernandez then got a double play grounder from Danny Valencia to get out of the inning.
Cano later added an over-the-shoulder basket catch running down the right-field line.
Hernandez became the first pitcher since Dwight Gooden to reach 2,000 innings during or before his age-28 season. Hernandez, 28, reached the mark when he completed the second inning.
Blue Jays: 1B Adam Lind (foot) is expected to join the team on Tuesday in Seattle, and 1B Edwin Encarnacion (quad) is still on track to rejoin the team Friday in Chicago.
Mariners: OF Michael Saunders (oblique) will have his rehab assignment delayed by a few days. He was set to leave Triple-A Tacoma to be with his wife for the birth of their child.
Blue Jays: J.A. Happ (8-6) has thrown at least seven innings in each of his past two starts, but has just one victory since June 26. He's given up three earned runs combined in his last two starts and the Blue Jays have lost both games.
Mariners: Chris Young (10-6) is 5-2 with a 2.79 ERA in his last 10 starts. Young has reached 11 victories only twice in his career.


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Story highlights
NASA's NuSTAR searches the galaxy looking for black holes
The black hole known as Markarian 335 is capturing and bending nearby X-ray light
The event is literally shedding light on how Einstein's theory of relativity works in extremes
NASA's black-hole hunting telescope has captured a cosmic battle between dark and light.
NuSTAR, formally known as the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, has observed a supermassive black hole's gravity tugging on X-ray light that's being emitted near that black hole.
That light is getting stretched and blurred, and researchers are getting to see it all in unprecedented detail, said NASA in a news release issued today.
In this instance, the corona – a source of X-ray light that sits near a black hole – recently collapsed in toward the black hole that's named Markarian 335.
The NuSTAR telescope has been collecting X-rays from black holes and dying stars for the past two years.
The craft completed its primary mission earlier this year, and it was redirected to investigate Markarian 335 once scientists noticed that the black hole had become dramatically brighter. NuSTAR observed that Markarian 335's gravity sucked the corona's light, an illuminating action that NASA likened to someone shining a flashlight for astronomers.
Scientists can now see the corona "lighting up material around the black hole," which allows them to study "the most extreme light-bending effects" of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, said NuSTAR's principal investigator, Fiona Harrison, in the news release. She is with the California Institute of Technology.
As if NuSTAR's observations and Einstein's theories aren't mind-boggling enough, NASA says the black hole Markarian 335 "spins so rapidly that space and time are dragged around with it."
The space agency says the new observations could help scientists better understand mysterious coronas and black holes, which are thought to be formed when massive stars collapse, creating such density that not even light can escape their intense gravitational pull.
Scientists believe supermassive black holes reside in the centers of galaxies. Some are more massive and rotate faster than others.


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June 30th, 2010
Group urges ban of 3 common dyes
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) says food dyes pose a number of risks to the American public and is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban three of the most commonly used dyes: Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. A new CSPI report says those dyes contain known carcinogens and contaminants that unnecessarily increase the risks of cancer, hyperactivity in children and allergic reactions.
"These synthetic chemicals do absolutely nothing to improve the nutritional quality or safety of foods, but trigger behavior problems in children and, possibly, cancer in anybody," said CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson, co-author of the report. "The Food and Drug Administration should ban dyes, which would force industry to color foods with real food ingredients, not toxic petrochemicals."
The FDA has not read the report yet an agency spokesperson said. "We appreciate the report from CSPI and look forward to reviewing it. We take our commitment to protecting children seriously".
According to the report, tests done on lab animals found contaminants that raised health concerns about several of the nine dyes currently approved for market. The approved dyes are Blue 1 & 2, Citrus Red 2, Green 3, Orange B, Red 3 & 40 and Yellow 5 & 6. And every year, about 15 million pounds of these dyes wind up in our food, with alot of it ending up in things like candy, fruit drinks and cereals.
The report is based on the FDA's own studies, and studies done by Industry and turned over to the FDA. But a statement from the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), who represents the industry says science shows food dyes are safe. "The safety of both artificial and natural colors has been affirmed through extensive review by the main global food safety bodies, including the US Food & Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority. Both the FDA and the food and beverage industry continually monitor any new research or data in this area to determine if a change in current policy is warranted. It is important for consumers and policymakers to know that food dyes are widely studied and that the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence confirms the safety of artificial food colors."
The Food Standards Agency, an independent government agency in Great Britain, released research a few years ago that suggested a linked between hyperactivity in some children and certain food coloring. Starting July 20th in the European Union, food containing some of these dyes will carry additional warning labels indicating possible adverse effects on "activity and attention in children."
CSPI went to Britain in 2008 to check out the differences in dye use first hand. It says it found more concern about food dyes and more government oversight. For example, CSPI says McDonald's Strawberry Sundaes get their color from fresh strawberries. The group says in the United States the color comes from Red dye 40. CSPI say in the UK, Fanta orange soda coloring comes from pumpkins and carrot extract. Here, it says the color comes from Red 40 and Yellow 6 dye.
Rand Carpenter, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, who makes Fanta, says they stand by their products in the United States - and abroad. "Where colors are used in our products they have been reviewed for safety by numerous health authorities and agencies, are permitted in every country where we operate, and are considered safe."
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The plot for a series of World Wars in the twentieth century, culminating in a third against the Muslim world, was devised in the eighteenth century, by American Civil War general, Albert Pike, then Grand Master of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, a primary adjunct of the Illuminati. However, though the final stages of this plot have been largely reserved for our time, the conspiracy is affiliated with a lore of occult knowledge that dates back to at least the sixth century BC. This lore begins with a heresy, known as Kabbalah, which disguises itself as Jewish, but is a pact to seek world domination, and the eradication of religion in favour of the worship of Lucifer.
The goal devised by these Kabbalists has since been the installation of their "messiah" as world leader, who, according to their interpretation of the Bible, is to be of line of King David. Since that time, to preserve this purported lineage, until the advent of their expected leader, these Luciferians have been carefully intermarrying amongst each other, and have included among them many of the leading figures of history. They begin with a Persian Royal family, who intermarried with that of Alexander the Great. By combining with that of Herod the Great, these families were responsible for the creation and dissemination of the leading mystery school of the Roman Empire, the Mysteries of Mithras, which eventually succeeded in co-opting the emerging Christian movement, by producing Catholic Christianity.
Nevertheless, a secret, or Gnostic, version of Christianity, also derived from Mithraism, survived to compete with Catholicism, in the form of several secret societies, like the Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons, practicing occult arts, or what is known as "witchcraft". This tradition, was perpetuated by the most popularized branch of the Luciferian bloodline, the Merovingians. Symbolized by the Holy Grail, the Merovingians, after intermarrying into the family of a Jewish Exilarch, or claimant to the Jewish throne, culminated in all the leading families of the Crusades.
It was at this time that this European branch of the family recombined with others from Eastern Europe and Armenia. These Eastern aristocracies derived from the enigmatic Khazars, who had populated southern Russia and the Basin of the Don River, and who, in the eighth century AD, had converted to Judaism. Legend has it, however, that the Khazars were remnants of the Lost Tribes. Armenia, just across the Caucasus, was another locale of these supposed Lost Tribes. It was the intermarriage and perpetuation of these aristocratic bloodlines that were being referred to in the heraldic symbols of the lily, the rose, the double-headed eagle, and the skull and crossbones.
Also during the Crusades, this network connected with an important occult center hiding within the Islamic world, in Cairo Egypt, who followed the heretical version of Islam known as Ismailism. According to Masonic legend, a number of these "Eastern Brethren" were rescued and brought to Scotland, where they provided the basis of Sottish Rite Freemasonry, which only emerged in the eighteenth century. However, at the same time, this legend also provided the basis for the establishment of Freemasonry in Egypt, which then became the second center of Illuminati activism. It was from these secret networks of impostors by which the Western powers created Islamic terrorism, used to foment of a Clash of Civilizations, through the fabrication of the terrorist threat.
The Illuminati claim to be descended of Fallen Angels, who taught them the "Ancient Wisdom", also known as the Kabbalah, which they have been preserving throughout the centuries. These Fallen Angels are referred to in the Bible, Book of Genesis, as the Nephilim, or "Sons of God", and were said to have descended to earth and intermarried with human beings. Christian interpretations struggle with the passage, choosing to translate the term into "mighty men". However, apocryphal Jewish texts explain that they were the devil and his legions, who were cast out of Heaven, and took wives from the female descendants of Cain. They produced a race known as the Anakim.
According to the Illuminati, it is they who first introduced humanity to the occult arts, including astrology, magic and alchemy. This period in history is believed by occultists to accord with the lost continent of Atlantis. The race produced by the intermixing of the Fallen Angels and humans is thought to be the Aryans. Supposedly, their corruption caused great corruption in the earth, to such an extent that, according to these same Apocryphal works, God decided to destroy them through the Flood. Here it is important to understand the Bible account, from which their legends are interpreted. According to the Bible, wickedness soon returned to the earth, however, when Noah's son Ham committed a sin. Ham moved southwest into Africa and parts of the near Middle East, and was the forefather of the nations there. From Ham's son, Mizraim, came the Egyptians, from Phut, the Lybians, and from Kush, came the Kushites, who established Ethiopia. Cush was also the father of Nimrod, the legendary founder of the ancient city of Babylon, who was responsible for instigating the building of the Tower of Babel.
Supposedly, Shem, Ham's brother, and Cush's great uncle, became appalled by his nephew's evil deeds, and killed Nimrod. Before his death, however, Nimrod had married and impregnated his own mother, named Semiramis. After Nimrod was slain, Semiramis instituted the worship of herself and her son among the people of Babylon, who came to regard Nimrod was a sun-god, and she was a goddess, or Queen of Heaven.
Nimrod, or Bel, as he was later worshipped by the Babylonians, was also identified with the constellation of Orion, the shepherd of the stars, and therefore referred to mystically in the Bible as "a mighty hunter before the Lord". Semiramis, later revered as Ishtar, was identified with the planet Venus, as were all the goddesses modeled after her.
Nimrod was confronted in his blasphemy by Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, who left his own nation of star-worshippers, in Harran, to found a new religion. Abraham's grandson Jacob, later Israel, had twelve sons, from whom were descended the Twelve Tribes of Israel. And, through the influence of the Kabbalah, these tribes acquired mystical symbolism, which would later become prominent features of European heraldry.
Like the astrological zodiac, these twelve tribes were divided into four camps of three, in accordance with the four seasons of the Zodiac, divided according to the Four Elements. Thus, Reuben, who is compared to running water, with Simeon and Gad, are Aquarius. Judah, the lion, with Issachar and Zebulon, are Leo. Benjamin, Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Jacob compares to the ox, are Taurus. Naphtali, Asher and Dan, whose device is the scorpion, synonymous astrologically with the eagle, are Scorpio.
The brothers tried to kill their sibling Joseph, by dropping him into a well, but he was later rescued, and eventually became a governor in Egypt. And, when the Israelites were stricken with famine, they were forced to seek the assistance of Joseph in Egypt, who finally revealed himself to his treacherous brothers.
After four hundred years in Egypt, the increasing number of Israelites in the country began to concern Pharaoh, who oppressed them. Moses was sent by God to revive the monotheistic religion of Abraham among the Israelites, and lead them to the land promised to their forefather, in what is known as the Covenant. For according to the Bible, God had chosen the Jewish people above other nations, to follow His commandments, especially to do unto others, as they would others do unto them, and to stand out as examples of righteousness for mankind.
After confronting Pharaoh, Moses successfully acquired permission to lead his people out of the land. However, a short time after the Israelites had cross the Red Sea, and while Moses was away on Mount Sinai receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments, they blasphemed by constructing a statue of a Golden Calf from their melted Jewelry. Scholars acknowledge that this cow-god was borrowed from the Apis Bull of the Egyptians, who was equated with Osiris. More accurately, Osiris and Isis were merely the Egyptian versions of the same couple worshipped in Babylon originally as Nimrod and Semiramis.
Moses ordered the Seventy Elders to slay the idolaters, and the tribe continued its journey to the Promised Land, where they were ordered to conquer the inhabitants. Palestine was then inhabited by the descendants of Ham's fourth son, Canaan. According to the Bible, although it was Ham who had sinned, it was upon Canaan that the curse would fall upon. According to occult interpretation, however, the Canaanites represented survivors of the Anakim. In Deuteronomy 9:1-2, we read: "Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, "Who can stand before the sons of Anak?"
The Israelites eventually succeed in taking hold of the land of Palestine, but soon falter into the worship of pagan gods. According to the Bible, the Jews are told repeatedly not to intermarry with the Canaanites, nor to worship their idols. Despite these warnings, not only do the early Israelites intermarry extensively with their subjects, but adopt their pagan ways, by worshipping Baal and Astarte, the Canaanite versions of Nimrod and Semiramis.
Though known by different names to different peoples, this dying-god and goddess shared common characteristics. They were consistently identified with the Sun, who in winter journeyed "beneath" the earth, into the Underworld. They were therefore believed to "die", and to resurrect in spring, corresponding to the Christian Easter. Because Baal and his sister Astarte, were regarded as twins, as well married to each other, they were identified as a single androgynous god, symbolized by Venus, whose original Latin name was Lucifer.
Basically, the ancient pagans' belief was dualistic. They believed there to be two powers in Heaven, a good God and evil one. Because he was believed to journey there in winter, the dying-god was regarded as the god of the Underworld, reigning over the souls of the dead, and therefore identified with evil. This led to the practice of black magic. To protect oneself from him, or to summon his powers to command spirits against one's enemies, it was believed necessary to perform heinous sacrifices. Most common was the sacrifice of children, rites which were performed in drunkenness, attended with loud music, to drown out the screams of the suffering child, and followed by sexual orgies. These were the basis of the rites later known as "Mysteries".
According to Kabbalistic interpretation, the entire line of Jewish kings were descended from Isaac's son Judah, and Tamar, his daughter-in-law, a Canaanite woman who had disguised herself as a prostitute in order to seduce him. Their son Perez was David's ancestor. Solomon, to whom much of Kabbalistic tradition is attributed, was the son of David from Bathsheba, a Hittite woman. Therefore, according to Kabbalistic interpretation, though the Messiah is to be a descendant of the royal line of David, being the "Son of David", he is also descended from the Satanic lineage of the Fallen Angels, through the Canaanites.
Therefore, through intermarriage with the Canaanites, the later Kabbalists could claim descent from the Anakim, and the Fallen Angels, or Lucifer and his legions. These Anakim, supposedly, were the original inhabitants of Atlantis, or Aryans. The Aryans are considered by the Illuminati to be the original core bloodline, a hybrid of humans and "divine" beings, responsible for the preservation of occult knowledge. According to modern historians, influenced by Kabbalistic legend, these Aryans, also known as Indo-Europeans, survived the Flood, or sinking of Atlantis, and found refuge in the mountains of Asia. From there they emerged the conquer the known peoples, spreading their customs and language to Central Asia, Iran, or Persia, and into Europe.
Interestingly, these various peoples have also historically been identified with the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel. An important branch of these is the Medes of Iran, among whom the original Lost Tribes had been scattered, before moving on into Armenia and Southern Russia.
After the death of King Solomon, in 928 BC, his realm was divided into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judea. The Kingdom of Israel covered most of the central and northern land of Israel and was inhabited by descendants of ten of the original twelve tribes that conquered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua: Asher, Dan, Ephraim, Gad, Issachar, Manasseh, Naphtali, Reuben, Simeon, and Zebulon. The Kingdom of Judea centered on Jerusalem and the Judean highlands, and comprised the remaining two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
A 125 years before the same fate would afflict the nation of Judah, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 721 BCE, and in line with the general policy of the Assyrians, its inhabitants were deported to other regions of their empire. According to the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser, 13,750 of the wisest and most skilled of the Israelites were deported by 733 BC, while 27,290 more Israelite sages, musicians and artisans were brought to Babylonia by Sargon II in 727 BC . According to II Kings 17:16-20, this disaster came upon the nation of Israel because:
They defied all the commands of the Lord their God and made two calves from metal. They set up an Asherah pole and worshipped Baal and all the forces of heaven. They even sacrificed their own sons and daughters in the fire. They consulted fortune-tellers and used sorcery and sold themselves to evil, arousing the Lord's anger. And because the Lord was angry, he swept them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained in the land. But even the people of Judah refused to obey the commands of the Lord their God. They walked down the same evil paths that Israel had established. So the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel. He punished them by handing them over to their attackers until they were destroyed.
According to the Books of Kings, the exiled tribes were transported to the region of the Medes, known as Medea, where they assimilated themselves into the population. Medea corresponds with today's northern Iraq, or Northwest Iran, called Kurdistan.
According to Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fifth century BC, "These Medes were called anciently by all people Arian [Aryan]; but when Medea, the Colchian, came to them from Athens, they changed their name. Such is the account which they themselves give." This Medea Herodotus is reffering to is the Colchian Thracian witch of the story of Jason and the Argonauts of Greek myth. According to the legend, she later married Aegeas of Athens, after whom the Aegean Sea is named. The Medes were descended from their son Medus of Colchis.
According to Herodotus' description, the Colchians, who dwelt in a land located along the western slope of the Caucasus Mountains near the Black Sea, were black and probably Jewish. Like the Jews of Palestine, which he referred to as "Phoenicians", Herodotus also regard the people of Colchis, as deriving from an "Egyptian colony". He not only pointed to the Colchians' "black skin and woolly hair" as evidence, but also to their oral traditions, language, methods of weaving, and practice of circumcision. In addition, Saint Jerome, writing during the fourth century AD, called Colchis the "Second Ethiopia." Similarly, two hundred years later, Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, described an "Ethiopian" presence in the same region. Diodorus of Sicily, a historian of the first century B.C, in his Universal History, stated:
They say also that those who set forth with Danaus [Dan, or Tribe of Dan], likewise from Egypt, settled what is practically the oldest city of Greece, Argos, and that the nations of the Colchi in Pontus and that of the Jews, which lies between Arabia and Syria, were founded as colonies by certain emigrants from their country [i.e., Egypt]; and this is the reason why it is a long-established institution among these peoples to circumcise their male children . . . the custom having been brought over from Egypt. Even the Athenians, they say, are colonists from Sais in [the Nile Delta of] Egypt.
By the sixth century BC, the Medes were able to establish an empire that stretched from Azerbaijan to north and Central Asia and Afghanistan. The Medes also mixed with other Iranians, especially Persians. Thus many modern Iranians are descendants of Medes. However, Mede heritage today is claimed particularly by groups in the western part of the Iranian Plateau, such as the Kurds, Lurs, Isfahan and the Turkic languages-speaking Azeri.
Although, the ten tribes, excepting Judah and Benjamin, have popularly been considered "lost" ever since, in ancient Jewish sources, their existence was well-known. According to Josephus, "…the Ten Tribes who are beyond the Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, whose numbers cannot be estimated." Similarly, the Apocrypha presume to also know their location. In the Fourth Book of Ezra, the Ten Tribes were said to have been carried by Hosea, a prophet in Israel in the eighth century BC, to the Euphrates, at the narrow passages of the river, from which they went on for a journey of a year and a half to a place called "Arzareth".
This would have taken them to the land of the Scythians, whom Josephus and others have identified them as the ancestors of Gog and Magog, among whom they would have been absorbed. According to Herodotus, the Scythians emerged from beyond the Euphrates across the Armenian river, Araxes, a river that borders Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan.[6] The Scythians were an Iranian-speaking people, who had come from the northern shore of the Black Sea and invaded Armenia and Asia Minor. The Scythians first appear in Assyrian annals as Ishkuzai, related to the modern term "Ashkenazi", from Ashkenaz, who was the son of Magog''s brother Gomer.
The most significant Scythian tribes mentioned in the Greek sources resided in the basin of the Don river, just north of the Crimea, from where they invaded Armenia and Cappadocia, to become allies of the early Mede rulers.[7] In the time of Herodotus, the Cappadocians occupied the whole region from the Black Sea to the Taurus mountains, in eastern Turkey, from which the Euphrates River descends into Syria.
Certain etymologies propose that the word Scythians, from "Sacae", in turn is derived from "Isaac Sons" or "Sons of Isaac." Isaac, Abraham's son, had two sons, Jacob, the father of the nation of Israel, and Esau, the forefather of the Edomites.
Certain etymologies propose that the word Scythians, from "Sacae", in turn is derived from "Isaac Sons" or "Sons of Isaac." Isaac, Abraham''s son, had two sons, Jacob, the father of the nation of Israel, and Esau, the forefather of the Edomites. In the Bible, Esau was tricked out of his birthright, the leadership of Israel, by his brother Jacob. Esau was a red haired, or "red all over like a hairy garment", and called Edom, which means red.15 Likewise, the Scythians, according to Herodotus, "have all deep blue eyes, and bright red hair." The legend persisted, such that, during the Middle Ages, German Jews regarded southern Russia and Central Asia as the location of the Lost Tribes, known to them as Red Jews, and identified with Gog and Magog.In addition to the so-called "Lost Tribes", in the History of the Nation of Archers, by Armenian historian of the thirteenth century, Grigor Akner, corroborated the legend that the Scythians were Edomites:
The Esavites, who are the Scythians, descended from Esau, son of Isaac. They are black, wild, and strange looking. From them descend the Boramichk' and Lekzik', who dwell in holes and traps and perpetrate many crimes. And it is said that the Edomites who are the Franks also are descended from him. These three peoples, descendants of Hagar, Ketura, and Esau, mingled together and gave birth to another people, strange looking and wicked, called Tatar [Mongols], which means sharp and light.[8]
Along with the Edomites, the nation of the Scythians is also closely related to that of the Tribe of Simeon. Apparently, there were only nine tribes in the northern kingdom of Israel, after the Levites joined Judah. Simeon too was still settled in the portion of the tribe of Judah although part of Simeon had immigrated to various other locations outside the Holy Land. 2Chron. 4:43-44 describes some men of Simeon who immigrated from Judah to Edom: "And some of them, even of the sons of Simeon, five hundred men, went to mount Seir, having for their captains Pelatiah, and Neariah, and Rephaiah, and Uzziel, the sons of Ishi. And they smote the rest of the Amalekites that were escaped, and dwelt there unto this day." Thus the kingdom of Judah, after the fall of Samaria and before the Babylonian captivity, consisted of four tribes: Judah, Benjamin, Simeon, and Levi.


text:
What Janet Yellen will do with the nation's purse
How she will run the world's largest central bank differently than Ben Bernanke and what has shaped her views.
| washington
When Janet Yellen was declared valedictorian in high school, a profile of her in the student newspaper told of her accomplishments. But it also revealed a seemingly tension-filled interview. The article describes the young Ms. Yellen both interrupting, and being interrupted by, a reporter from the school paper, The Pilot.
"Come now ... you're letting The Pilot go to your head!" Yellen snaps at the interviewer at one point. At another, Yellen reverses roles by becoming the questioner, to which the reporter replies, "No comment!"
Not perhaps normal fare for a 1963 high school newspaper, in which such a story might typically emerge as a prosaic recounting of a top student's academic achievements. But Yellen was not ordinary, even as valedictorians go. For one thing, she was the editor in chief of The Pilot at the time and in that role had opted to write the story. The tension in the room, it turns out, was actually Yellen being interviewed by ... herself.
The relatively short article, viewed in hindsight, hints at several traits that friends and colleagues say are defining ones for Yellen, who is poised to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve, the world's most prominent central bank.
The verbal sparring between Yellen the reporter and Yellen the student was an engaging – and humorous – literary device. But it also shows how Yellen is inclined to ask probing questions and to be interested in people even as she grapples with abstract ideas. Saying "come now ..." and interrupting herself, Yellen revealed not so much a combative personality as someone prone to get to the point and to avoid becoming too proud of her own intellect.
In fact, many people who know her say those points sum up a prominent part of Yellen's persona: She's ultrasmart but also ultramethodical – wanting to think through problems from every angle and with an open mind.
"She was brilliant and a hard worker," says Lois Hedberg, a classmate and friend from those days at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. "I don't think she ever just got along on brilliance."
Her thorough, skip-no-detail approach will be tested in the years ahead as Yellen begins a four-year term scheduled to start at the end of January. Arguably no individual will have more influence over financial conditions for American families. She can't pull the levers of monetary policy all alone, but Fed chiefs traditionally have wielded substantial influence guiding the course of everything from interest rates to the regulatory climate for US banks.
And Yellen, appointed by President Obama to succeed Ben Bernanke, arrives at a crucial time. The central bank today is playing an unusually large role in efforts to revive the economy, because the rest of Washington is mired in partisan gridlock.
"The Fed is the only game in town," says Alice Rivlin, a Brookings Institution scholar who served as Fed vice chair during the Clinton era.
For Yellen, that will mean navigating a difficult course from the moment she occupies the head chair in the Fed's ornate conference room in Washington: trying to move the economy toward more solid growth while also backing the central bank off its stimulative policy of holding short-term interest rates at zero. This will affect everything from unemployment to inflation to stock market portfolios.
How well Yellen performs that task will have another impact, too – on the Fed's reputation. Many critics say the institution seems more attentive to big banks than to the American populace. One of Yellen's challenges will be to defend the notion that the Fed serves all the American people, and that it deserves to remain a largely self-managed institution, free from outside interference by the president or Congress.
Others have labeled her an inflation "dove" who'll allow greater erosion of the dollar's purchasing power – or risk a new housing or stock market bubble – in misguided efforts to reach the goal of a full-employment economy.
She'll be the first Democrat to hold the job since Paul Volcker back in 1987. But even Republicans don't doubt she has the résumé for the position. She's just spent four years as No. 2, the vice chair to Mr. Bernanke. Her career path has led her from prominent teaching positions to varied roles in the Federal Reserve System. Some have called her the best qualified nominee ever.
Yellen will be the first woman to head America's top financial policymaking post. Women have headed regulatory agencies from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. But the Fed role is far more visible and carries more clout.
No other major central bank around the world – including the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Swiss National Bank – has ever been led by a woman, either. Although Yellen has said in the past that she hasn't felt discrimination during her career, finance remains a male-dominated realm in America. Her elevation carries both substantive and symbolic importance.
"It's very significant, because every time a glass ceiling is broken it sends a signal that government is more inclusive," says Jennifer Lawless, a professor of government at American University in Washington.
• • •
Back in the 1960s, Yellen once accompanied her parents on a transatlantic summer cruise. A highlight for Yellen, then in high school, had to do with learning about rocks. A geologist on board, thrilled to meet a young person with a keen interest in his field, presented her with a trilobite fossil.
She already had a credible rock collection. But instead of eagerly adding the fossil, perhaps 500 million years old, to her personal stash, Yellen loaned it to the biology lab at her school so that others could learn from it, too.
Exploration was a kind of family trademark during her time growing up. Her parents loved to travel, and she went with them to South America and all around Europe.
"They had inquiring minds," says Susan Grosart, who at the time was a close friend of Yellen's.
The melting pot of New York City was itself a kind of global microcosm of arts, sciences, and culture. Ms. Grosart says she and Yellen took it all in.
"Her parents used to include me in their family outings" during grade school, which included plays, concerts, or science lectures, Grosart recalls. Those family times sometimes took place on Wednesday afternoons, when Julius Yellen, Janet's father, would close up his doctor's practice early.
Yet Yellen's youth wasn't all about igneous rocks and high-brow culture. Grosart recalls that one of those concerts that they went to featured a young songwriter coming out of the folk tradition, named Bob Dylan.
Grosart says Yellen was a "very normal kid." "We would talk for hours by phone" about typical subjects such as boys, clothes, and "who said what to whom."
Another former school friend has described Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood back then as a blend of Irish, Italian, Lebanese, and other ethnic groups, as well as Jewish families like the Yellens. New York City was benefiting at that time from an influx of immigrants displaced by World War II, "many of whom became teachers," the friend, Jacqueline Leo, wrote recently in The Fiscal Times.
Ms. Leo added that "the real gift to teenage girls like Janet and me was the way we were treated by our teachers, our parents and our peers." Instead of being beholden to gender stereotypes, "[w]e were expected to take charge, just as our mothers and grandmothers did when men went off to war."
Yellen was an all-around scholar who, with encouragement from her parents, took an advanced-course track through middle school, allowing her to enter high school as a sophomore and graduate a year ahead of her peers.
Her prowess with language arts propelled her toward the editor in chief role at The Pilot. Yet her self-profile revealed her to be fascinated by science and math. She was fun-loving and showed a ready wit (she said she enjoyed reading philosophy because it helped her "write unpopular essays"), but also seemed to exhibit an unusual degree of discipline.
"She did lots of things, and she did them all really well," says Ms. Hedberg, who was a colleague of Yellen's on The Pilot and another top scholar at Fort Hamilton High. "What stood out to me was intentionality, purposefulness, a determination not to be better than others but to be the best she could be."
Yellen wasn't one to put on airs, Hedberg says. That's a trait that has stuck with her throughout her career at the Fed. Staff economists remember her eating with them in the bank cafeteria.
But she was motivated to achieve. An unsigned editorial in The Pilot at the close of her senior year (Yellen believes she wrote it but, 50 years later, can't be sure) urged a do-something outlook that her own life embraced: "Be curious! Wonder why the sky is blue, what fire is, why peace-loving nations feud ... but wonder about something!"
The valedictorian headed off to college at Pembroke (then the women's college at Brown University) in Rhode Island. Economics quickly drew her in. "She was totally smitten" after her first course, Grosart says, recalling the excitement Yellen shared when returning home on a break.
Graduating with highest honors led to the opportunity to do doctoral work at Yale University, followed by a rare invitation from Harvard University to start teaching there before she had landed a job anywhere else. Yellen's career had begun its upward arc.
• • •
In 1977, Yellen met George Akerlof, another rising star in the field of economics. It was essentially love at first seminar. Or, actually, at lunch after a seminar. This was when the two happened to be working in research positions at the Federal Reserve in Washington. They were married the next year.
"We liked each other immediately," Mr. Akerlof writes in an autobiographical sketch. "Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly, but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics."
The two collaborated on research even as they were also teaming up to raise a son, Robert.
The scholar spouses shared an interest in mysteries related to unemployment. One influential paper, for example, promoted an explanation for why wages are "sticky" – why they don't drop when a recession hits and unemployment spikes. Their conclusion: Employers know steep wage cuts could affect the morale and productivity of workers. So firms shun the temptation to just pay the lowest wage possible at a given time.
Akerlof's and Yellen's academic lives have been centered around the University of California, Berkeley, where he won a Nobel Prize and she taught for years at the Haas School of Business.
Family interests over the years have included cooking, hiking, tennis, and travel. Yet their dinner table discussions, Yellen acknowledged in 1995, might not be that interesting to an outsider (typically revolving around economics).
But another way to put that might be this: The home environment was stimulating enough that Robert Akerlof, their son, chose to enter the same field and now teaches at the University of Warwick in England.
Yellen took her first policymaking role at the Fed in 1994. She was the junior member of the bank's seven-person Board of Governors in Washington.
Donald Kohn, another longtime Fed official, recalls how an interesting pattern soon emerged. When Mr. Kohn's team of staffers would present economic briefings to the board, Yellen almost invariably seemed to be the one who homed in on the key issue.
"She would find the central point in the briefing, sometimes the central weak point in the briefing. I was often surprised, especially at first," says Kohn, who later held the vice chair role that Yellen would eventually occupy.
It was surprising in part because the other six got to comment or raise questions – starting with Chairman Alan Greenspan – before she, as the newest member, could utter a word.
Kohn's view of Yellen is echoed by Ted Truman, another former Fed official now in the think-tank realm. Mr. Truman knew Yellen back when she was a doctoral candidate at Yale – and he recalls similar signs of a sharp intellect.
Top-flight Yale economist James Tobin turned to her to assist with a graduate class in economic theory, Truman says. Yellen's job was to take notes for the whole class, because Professor Tobin wanted the students to be free to listen and discuss. "They were very elegant and careful notes," Truman says, "and they became classics" that were used again in subsequent years.
• • •
All this may make it sound as if Yellen is a superwoman – someone who crunches numbers about the American economy while wearing a cape. She isn't. But few criticisms of her personally have emerged since she was nominated by Mr. Obama.
She often prefers to speak from prepared notes rather than spontaneously, which some see as a sign of preparation and precision and others see as too programmed. The best shot one Washington gossip news report could take was to chide her for – horrors! – wearing the same outfit to both her confirmation announcement and her confirmation hearing.
Yet she does draw criticism for where she might lead the Fed. On the right, some warn of the unintended consequences of monetary stimulus efforts – from inflation to an out-of-control stock or housing market boom. On the left, one concern is that the Fed is "captured" by the banking barons it is supposed to monitor for risky behavior. The question lingers even though Yellen has called for regulatory reforms that go beyond the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.
Her confirmation vote, on Jan. 6, was 56 to 26 – the narrowest margin any Fed nominee has ever been approved by. All the "no" votes were cast by Republicans.
Yellen's history at the Fed shows her to be more pragmatic than ideological. It also suggests she can be tough and persuasive when she wants.
Although she's often described as being in the Fed's dove camp – emphasizing the full-employment side of the Fed's "dual mandate" from Congress more than the other goal, price stability – many economists say calling Yellen dovish is misleading. Rather, they see a policymaker who happens to see unemployment as the biggest concern now, but not the only concern.
In the mid-1990s, for instance, she once worried that Mr. Greenspan was being too slow to support a hike in interest rates to stave off inflation. Even more telling may be a Wall Street Journal analysis of forecasts by Fed policymakers since 2009 that found hers to be the most accurate. Her emphasis on the employment side of the Fed's mandate since the recession hit has been irreproachable, her defenders say.
Yet she does harbor deep concerns about joblessness, something rooted in the economic cycles she has witnessed. In a 1995 interview published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Yellen, when asked about the motivation behind her work, gave a simple answer: "Why are we in this business? It seems to me that it's to promote the well-being of American households. That's what it's all about."
And she put a finer point on it, noting the effect that a deep recession can have. "You can see the visible toll it takes on households," she said.
The example she offered then was the formidable recession that ended in 1982, but this concern is amplified today in the wake of the 2007-09 Great Recession. She and others worry that if lost jobs aren't replaced soon, what started as a cyclical problem – a sudden but temporary jump in unemployment – could wind up leading to long-term joblessness for many individuals. They could lose skills, lose their connections to the work world, and end up dropping out of the labor force.
Yellen is under no illusions that the Fed can magically fix the problem, but she has voiced a "do something" determination to try.
That reflects her longstanding focus, as a scholar as well as a policymaker, on unemployment. But it also tells of a person who, colleagues and friends say, has a deep well of compassion and empathy.
Mary Daly, who worked as a senior research economist in San Francisco when Yellen headed the Federal Reserve branch there, describes her as someone who enjoys making human connections, whether it's with co-workers or with audience members who approach her after a speech.
"When she encounters an individual who's having a difficulty ... she has an enormous amount of compassion," Ms. Daly says. "She just pauses" to listen or be of help.
Wherever she ends up on policy decisions, a central demand on Fed chiefs is to build consensus among the members of an often-divided committee. Economist Alan Blinder – a friend and former colleague of Yellen's on the policy committee – wrote recently that she blends persuasiveness with "the ability to disagree without being disagreeable."
And if that doesn't work, there is always humor, which Yellen has also been known to apply from time to time. Daly recalls being at one San Francisco Fed event that featured life-size cardboard images of bank leaders, including Yellen and herself, who are similar in size, which is to say not very tall. "She thought she was taller than me," but the props seemed to say otherwise. Daly says it prompted a laughter-filled episode in which Yellen insisted that they stand back to back, sans shoes, while other economists helped judge who really had the edge.
"It was a glorious day for me," Daly says, adding that Yellen took the certified – and to her, surprising – loss in stride.
• • •
Yellen's next act will undoubtedly be her most important. Under Bernanke, the Fed quelled a financial panic through various emergency support programs undertaken on its own or in league with the US Treasury. Now the job is less urgent. The word "crisis" isn't in daily headlines. But it's far from an inconsequential moment.
For one thing, she will have to maintain a stable financial system that won't be prone to the kind of financial crisis that struck in 2008. This will mean careful oversight of financial firms, without the kind of overregulation that can stifle the flow of credit.
Yellen will also have to keep the economic recovery going while beginning the long march toward "normalizing" the Fed's monetary policies. This will come in two phases – first, in the gradual withdrawal from a program of big monthly bond purchases designed to keep long-term interest rates low; and, second, in beginning to raise the Fed's short-term interest rate from its post-2008 level of essentially zero percent.
That first step began with a Fed decision in December. Raising interest rates appears further off – perhaps some time in 2015 – given that inflation remains low and economists see plenty of slack in the job market. Some 11.7 million Americans are counted by the Labor Department as either unemployed or as having dropped out of the labor force because of discouragement.
All these recalibrations involve high-stakes decisions. Anything perceived as tightening policy could unnerve global stock and bond markets. But keeping the money spigot gushing for too long carries its own dangers, such as penalizing savers with low interest rates and swelling the Fed's bond portfolio to an unwieldy size.
For now, Yellen stands poised to persist with monetary stimulus. That outlook stems from her reading of the current economy – the still-high rate of unemployment and inflation that's below the Fed's 2 percent target. But it's also a view that connects back to her Brooklyn roots in the wake of a previous financial shock.
"My mother and father were pretty traumatized by the [1930s] Depression," Yellen told a UC Berkeley alumni magazine in 2012. "I remember thinking, 'this is something our country should never live through again.' "
Whichever direction she ends up taking the Fed, she probably won't let her newfound power fill her with visions of grandeur. Because if she does, somewhere deep down inside, there will probably be Yellen the cub reporter telling Yellen the central banker: "Come now ... you're letting this Fed job go to your head!"


text:
Salve amici,
I'm looking at getting a Romanesque ring made for myself. However after looking through pages and pages of rings, I've come to the conclusion that they were just as individual as the people who wore them.
So with that in mind I'm thinking of getting a ring with the phrase "Eternal Rome, Light of the World" engraved around the outside of it. The only problem is I have an abysmal grasp of Latin. I think the translation would be "Roma aeterna, lux mundi (orbis?)". Emphasis on the 'think' there.
If anyone here could give me a hand with translation, I would much appreciate it.
A. Flavius


text:
Here we are again. Welcome back. It's Friday and time for another Marketing for Romance Writers 52-Week Blog Challenge post. It's a blog hop, baby!
Week 15: How I celebrate completing my manuscript
I'm not sure if this means after completing a draft or after it's been edited and ready to go. Either way, I don't celebrate like I should, but for now it works for me, and gives me a period of down time after finishing a book.
Upon completion of a manuscript, I'll take a few days or a weekend to get away from the stories and relax with Netflix, movies, dinner with friends, or take time to read someone else's book. To breathe.
I don't celebrate outwardly, but I do celebrate internally at different stages. A sense of pride overwhelms me once I:
- Finish a first draft.
- Send a manuscript to my editor.
- Finish the final edits.
- I RELAX and enjoy the moment after sending it to my formatter.
- FINALLY I'm thrilled yet celebrating subtly after I upload and hit publish.
When my work on a book is finished, I'll smile and tell my hero and his heroine they are ready to go out into the world. I will literally miss them when it's over. This is why I write a series. I get to see them again.
One thing I do is give myself a silent praise or a pat on the back when I finish the first draft. I mention it on social media, email or text my friends and family, but other writers understand it better than even best friends. However, family and friends are happy for my accomplishment. After publication and while out, I want to scream, "I published another book!"
Celebration is simple because I feel like I'm on a timeline and need to get the next book started and written as soon as possible. Book sales are my survival. Book writing is my sanity.
With my next book, which is the third book in a spin off series, Canyon Junction: Hearts in Love Series, I DO PLAN on gathering my friends and celebrating together. Oh, and to get a mani-pedi.
Thanks for reading.
This is the time to hop on over to check out the #MFRWauthor Blog to find other participating authors. See ya next time.
Photo credits: Pixabay.


text:
This report reviews the performance and asset allocations of Ultra HNWIs in Brazil, and highlights top-performing cities. It also includes an evaluation of the local wealth management industry.
Report Highlights
* There were 4,072 UHNWIs in Brazil in 2013, with an average per capita wealth of US$126.3 million, making them a prime target group for wealth sector professionals. Of this total, there were 41 billionaires, 595 centimillionaires and 3,436 affluent millionaires.
* UHNWIs accounted for 2.1% of the total Brazilian HNWI population in 2013, significantly higher than the global average of 0.7%. During the review period, the number of Brazilian UHNWIs increased by 71.1%, from 2,380 in 2009 to 4,072 in 2013.
* There was a range of performance between the different UHNWI wealth bands. While the number of billionaires increased by 215.4%, the number of centimillionaires and affluent millionaires increased by 74.5% and 69.7% respectively.
* WealthInsight expects the number of UHNWIs to increase by 17.3% to reach 4,965 in 2018. This will include 47 billionaires, 728 centimillionaires and 4,189 affluent millionaires.
Full Report Details at
- http://www.fastmr.com/prod/837595_ultra_hnwis_in_brazil_2014.aspx?afid=301
Report Scope
* UHNWI volume, wealth and allocation trends from 2009 to 2013
* UHNWI volume, wealth and allocation forecasts to 2018
* UHNWI asset allocations across 13 asset classes
* Number of UHNWIs in each state and all major cities
* Fastest growing cities and states for UHNWIs (2009-2013)
* Number of wealth managers in each city
* City wise ratings of wealth management saturation and potential
* Details of the development, challenges and opportunities of the Wealth Management and Private Banking sector in Brazil
* Size of Brazil wealth management industry
* Largest domestic private banks by AuM
* Detailed wealth management and family office information
* Insights into the drivers of HNWI wealth
Reasons to Get this Report
* The WealthInsight Intelligence Center Database is an unparalleled resource and the leading resource of its kind. Compiled and curated by a team of expert research specialists, the database comprises dossiers on over 60,000 HNWIs from around the world.
* The Intelligence Center also includes tracking of wealth and liquidity events as they happen and detailed profiles of major private banks, wealth managers and family offices in each market.
* With the Database as the foundation for our research and analysis, we are able obtain an unsurpassed level of granularity, insight and authority on the HNWI and wealth management universe in each of the countries and regions we cover.
* Report includes comprehensive forecasts to 2018.
* Also provides detailed information on UHNWIs in each major city.
About Fast Market Research
Fast Market Research is a leading distributor of market research and business information. Representing the world's top research publishers and analysts, we provide quick and easy access to the best competitive intelligence available. Our unbiased, expert staff is always available to help you find the right research to fit your requirements and your budget.
For more information about these or related research reports, please visit our website at http://www.fastmr.com or call us at 1.800.844.8156.
You may also be interested in these related reports:
- Ultra HNWIs in Chile 2014
- Ultra HNWIs in Japan 2014
- Ultra HNWIs in Switzerland to 2014
- Ultra HNWIs in Nigeria to 2014
- Ultra HNWIs in France 2014
New Market Research Report: Ultra HNWIs in Brazil 2014
Company: Fast Market Research, Inc.
Contact Name: Bill Thompson
Contact Email: email@example.com
Contact Phone: 1-413-485-7001
Contact Name: Bill Thompson
Contact Email: email@example.com
Contact Phone: 1-413-485-7001


text:
Monday, November 8, 2010
Chocolate Nutella Dulce de Leche Mousse Cake
This is the birthday cake I made for my nephew, I do not want to make him a usual chocolate mousse cake so I combined both recipes that I had used before and came out this.
Ingredients : for 7" cake
For Base:
80gm oreo cookies - blended
30gm butter - melted
Mix all the biscuit base ingredients together and press into a 6" springform tin. Baked at preheated oven at 200C for 10 mins and cool aside then chill in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.
Dulce De Leche Mousse : Adapted from here
200ml whipping cream, cold
100g dulce de leche, cold
1 tsp gelatin
1 tbsp water
1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature.
2. Put dulce de leche into mixing bowl and put in a bit of cream. On low speed, mix to combine, adding more gradually. When all the whipping cream has been added in, turn to high speed and beat until soft peaks.
3. Turn to low speed. Add in gelatin mixture slowly while beating, and beat until stiff.
For Nutella Chocolate Mousse : adapted from here
1 egg yolks
15g sugar
40g melted butter
50g dark chocolate
100g nutella
150ml whipped cream
1 tsp gelatin powder + 1 tbsp water
Method :
1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature.
2. Melt dark chocolate and nutella over a pot of simmering hot water and stir till mix well and set aside to cool down to room temperature.
3. Whisk the egg yolk and sugar on a double boiler until pale in color and thicken. Mix in the melted butter.
4. Add the melted dark chocolate & nutella to the egg yolk mixture, mix until well combine.
5. Add in the gelatin solution and mix well.
6. Fold in the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture.
Chocolate Ganache Topping :
100g chocolate, chopped
60g whipping cream
20g butter
1. Boil the chocolate, whipping cream and butter until mix well and smooth. Set aside for cool slightly.
Assembly :
1. Alternate scoop the DLL mousse and Nutella Chocolate Mousse onto the cookie base until fill up 3/4 of the cake tin. Left one cup of DLL mouse for decoration purpose if desire.
2. Chill the mousse cake in the fridge and about 4 hours.
3. Bring the mousse cake out from the fridge and unmould the cake.
4. Pipe the DLL mousse at the edge of the cake and pour in the chocolate ganache and chill the cake until serving.
45 comments:
Talented bakers like you must be giving those bakeries out there a run for their money. ;)ReplyDelete
Your nephew is so lucky to have an aunt like you. Such a beautiful cake and painstakingly decorated for his birthday. Thumbs up, Jess!ReplyDelete
Looks totally decadent!ReplyDelete
I am always envious when I see you ladies churning out lovely birthday cakes like these....ReplyDelete
self baked cake always the healthier...plus full of loving & care~~ReplyDelete
Jess, this is one yummy looking BD cake! Bet the fella must have been extremely pleased.ReplyDelete
WOW! Very beautiful cake :)) I must try to make dulce de leche, hope it is not too sweet.ReplyDelete
beautiful and yummy cake!ReplyDelete
The cake is so beautiful. Your nephew must be really happy.ReplyDelete
Thanks for sharing.
Nicely decorated cake! The best part is you can taste both cakes in one cake :)ReplyDelete
So many things you can bake with DDL. I like all your birthday cakes leh. All very pretty!ReplyDelete
Oh my goodness Jess..~~My goddess..u r so professional!! Reminds me of those cafeteria cakes..~~ReplyDelete
You made my tummy protests....ReplyDelete
Oreo, nutella and DDL,ReplyDelete
everything sounds so good!!!!
Makes me drooling....ReplyDelete
A bet this mousse cake taste great with nutella, dulce de leche mousse and the best part is the oreo base. ;pReplyDelete
Whoa whoa whoa... you must make one for me when I visit you in the future. haha.... Just blaughing! Look so very delicious. Thank you for sharing it and also congrats on your successful outcome. I'm sure this is a killer.ReplyDelete
Looks very pretty leh! I am dying to see what it is inside too, lol! I bet your nephew loved it very much...DDL and nutella, what can be better! Yum!ReplyDelete
Wow! Lovely cake! Bet it's creamilicious!ReplyDelete
Tigerfish, I am really above the sky hearing such nice words from u heeheehee...ReplyDelete
Thanks Cheah, I do hope he love this cake same as the birthday cake I made for him last yr :).
Thanks Nel.
Shirley, you can bake so well, I trust you can churn out even better birthday cakes than me if you want to.ReplyDelete
苏联妈妈, I totally agree and what's more, we can rojak the flavor of the cakes we want heeheehee...
Thanks Jo.
Ann, the sweetness of the DDL is just like condensed milk. You can adjust the sweetness by using lesser DDL.ReplyDelete
Thanks Jess.
Thanks Jet.
鲸鱼蓝蓝蓝, I didnt spread the ganache, I just pour onto the cake and it became so smooth :D.ReplyDelete
Thanks DG. This is the beauty of homemade, we can create or combine any flavor we like :).
Thanks Coraine,I am happy to hear all the nice words hahaha...
Ching,sorry for that :P.ReplyDelete
Wendy, these are all my favourite and I combined them together :).
Somewhere in Singapore, I hope I can share with you some :P.
SSB, I like DDL and at the same time, I still have a can of DDL to clear off :P. Thanks for the compliments, I love hearing all the nice words especially from baking expert like you, I am floating now heeheehee...ReplyDelete
Oh yes, the taste is great, Happy Flour :D.
Kristy, I will definitely make one for you when you visit Spore, let me know when you are coming ok. And thanks for the nice words, I am happy to hear that, more more also wont feel too much hahaha...
Bee Bee, I am curious to see the inside too but too bad I was not around to witness the cake cutting leh :(.ReplyDelete
Thanks Busygran.
Jess, please take a note that I come over for the tea and do reserve one, not, two large slices of this chocolatey mousse for me! Looks mouthwatering!ReplyDelete
Your birthday cakes always look so neat and professional. I'm still trying to perfect my decorating skills or at least not so messy. :)ReplyDelete
I'm a big fan of chocolate. I don't mind to add a few more pounds if I get to sample one slice of this cake. Looks really beautiful and mouth-watering!!ReplyDelete
This sounds (and I am sure it tasted) heavenly!ReplyDelete
WOW!!!!! What a gorgeous cake for your nephew! You are such a talented baker and I am green with envy. Excellent job!!!!ReplyDelete
Wow! That's a grand-looking cake! I think you and ZY are becoming cake sifus! One day, 我會上山拜師的.ReplyDelete
Wah! That's very nice cake indeed! The Dulce De Leche and nutella is a great combo! No doubt, this is a very tasty cake!ReplyDelete
lovely cake, real delicious looking!!ReplyDelete
Combining those two mousse recipes in this one cake yielded pure perfection! Love the Oreo crust too :)ReplyDelete
Great combo and looks store-bought! You are such a great aunt!ReplyDelete
That looks so so so delicious! Love your flavor combo too! You have one lucky nephew!ReplyDelete
Amazing!!! a slice please?ReplyDelete
Angie, I look forwad for you to visit me, I will definitely reserve 2 BIG BIG slices for you :).ReplyDelete
Thanks Aimei. My deco skill is bad, tats why I always go for simple deco.
Thanks Food For Tots for dropping by and the nice words :).
Thanks Angel.ReplyDelete
Thanks Pam, you are making me blush heeheehee...
Pei Lin, I am still far far away from being a shifu lah... but I love what you had said heeheehee////
Thanks Grace. Yes DDL and nutella, both my love :).ReplyDelete
Thanks Petite Nyonya.
Marla, I agree with you and I love oreo crust too.
Thanks Pigpigscorner.ReplyDelete
Thanks Ravenous Rowie.
Thanks Mr Pineapple Man. Sure, once slice reserve for you :)
Wow I totally want a piece of that cake.ReplyDelete
I used your nutella filling recipe to make a choc nutella layer cake for my daughter's birthday and it's awesome! Thanks for sharing this recipe.ReplyDelete
Here is the turnout of my version.