> I'd wager their free healthcare doesn't contribute as much as their free education, ext.
Germany's healthcare system is universal, but not free.
Standard insurance is funded by a combination of employee contributions, employer contributions and government subsidies on a scale determined by income level. Higher income workers sometimes choose to pay a tax and opt out of the standard plan, in favor of 'private' insurance. The latter's premiums are not linked to income level but instead to health status.
I wonder how many of us it would take to start affecting change (no pun intended) among our local retailers by getting dollar coins this way and proceeding to use them around town on a consistent basis.
From a legal and personal responsibility standpoint, the law is lopsided, but it may act as a deterrent to driving in the first place, thereby encouraging bike use. I think that's what the OP of this thread was trying to get at.
Which is exactly my point. One size fits all doesn't work. The scale or notation system should be appropriate to the music. AFAIK, Indian classical has its own way of doing things, and most blues and jazz isn't notated the same way as classical music, either. Going to a fully justified/chromatically-based system is just sweeping the intricacies and nuances under the rug. Plus, naming "all twelve" tones doesn't even begin to address what you would do with microtonal music.
Your point about the "white keys" is well taken, which is why I mentioned moveable do solfege. The absolute pitch of "C" takes on a different name in every key, which respects its relationship within that key.
However, there's a reason that scales like the melodic minor are written with sharps (or "sharped flats"/naturals) ascending and flats/naturals descending. Sharps emphasize rising pitch and flats emphasize falling pitch, and can thus be bent slightly higher and lower, respectively. You would lose that with fixed chromatic note names.
(And as an aside, recognizing when a note in a scale has been modified from its normal position, and in which direction it was modified, is yet another reason to practice your scales!)
If you really enjoy getting to the heart of "what sounds good," you would probably enjoy adding more music theory to your study. Make sure not to stop at scales, and move on to intervals, chords, and the circle of fifths. :) Eventually, instead of just the "what" of what sounds good, you start learning the "why."
Without first-hand knowledge of the benefit you could get from playing scales, I'm not sure what you're attesting to. You've managed to get along without them. That's fine. It might not make a noticeable difference after a few years of playing, but if you keep going, there are technical holes in your muscle memory which you don't even realize you have, which scales would help fill. (It's this way for everyone, BTW.) I still get benefit from scales after 25 years, and actually enjoy them much of the time-- when they're savored and played in fun patterns. The time to play scales in piano practice can be a lot like the meditation portion of a yoga routine.
On the other hand, if you're just playing "for fun," and aren't hitting any major technical frustration points, then whatever. Keep having fun. Just remember that if you start to not have fun, there are "icky" things like scales which can help you keep advancing. Scales can begin to help at any point in one's musical life.
This completely ignores the fact that the chromatic note relationships in different keys are not the same. F# is not the same pitch as Gb. In fact, I find thinking about notes in terms of a moveable do solfege (not as static names at all) to be by far the most effective system, since it really manifests the relationships in the key that you're playing in. When you realize those functional relationships, along with the requisite tensions in pitch, which you can emphasize on a non-justified instrument, music making becomes a lot more fun and easy.
During my second winter in Portland, OR, I started to feel chronically tired and nearly unable to wake up each morning, no matter how much sleep I had had. Once I realized something was wrong, I started Vitamin D supplements and within a day or two, I felt like a brand new person. It was really dramatic. Since then, I take them every year during the colder months.
While I agree with the sentiment, slowing down that much isn't practical for most working adults in this country, many of whom are lucky to get a week of vacation per year. Four to six days of travel per vacation instead of two won't work for Americans unless labor laws change to protect our right to sufficient time off.
Local transport isn't any more of an issue than it is with air travel. If there's not sufficient public transportation, taxis and car rental companies will pop up to fill the void.
Even if it were an issue, people in this country are getting increasingly fed up with air travel, and they may be willing to make some trade-offs to travel in a more humane manner.
The front page gives me no idea of what I will get by registering, so it's hard to commit to getting an account. (Maybe that would have been remedied by the demo people seem to be mentioning.) It also does nothing to explain what the site does or how it works, other than a vague goal.
This makes me think of how small countries can (potentially) have the ability to be so much more progressive than huge countries like the U.S. We can't even get on the frickin' metric system.
I think it would be best to do that sort of thing when you can prepare a good chunk of your populace to really try it out. "Hey everyone, start driving on the left on your morning commute tomorrow!" That way, you have a concerted effort to do it right, and lots of people driving on one side or the other would reinforce the behavior. That's all as opposed to having a few bleary-eyed drivers in the wee hours potentially get a surprise.
What if it's not to help follow the line for reading, but to "feel" the page as you read it? A proxy for dealing with immaterial bits on a screen instead of holding and feeling the paper of a book or magazine? Showing you have some sort of control over it.
I think it's just that highlighting is neat. Some portion of my brain is pleased by the flashing/changing colors (different than a flashing ad, etc., since I'm controlling the action).
Not everybody highlights text in a functional way. In fact, what I'm highlighting usually has nothing to do with what I'm reading at the moment, and is more of a nervous habit/tic than anything else.
I haven't looked at their script. I'm curious whether they transmit selected text, as Daring Fireball seems to suggest, or only copied text. If the former, they're going to get a lot of false positives from those of us who neurotically select blocks of text on pages for no reason while reading.
A few times, my husband and I got panhandled coming back from a nice restaurant, and happened to have a doggie bag with us. Offering that never went over well and either got outright rejected or grudgingly accepted and quite likely not eaten.
As the article says, homeless people have ample food, due to the missions, et al. A friend of mine who had a brief homeless stint confirmed this, saying that it was easy to get three square meals a day while living on the streets. (It just takes standing in line for hours, which makes pursuing other things, which might help one get off the street, difficult.)
In Portland, OR, which has a similar homeless problem to SF's, I learned to always include "sorry" when I turned them down, as when I did so, they almost never were rude to me in response. When I didn't say "sorry," I could never be sure what to expect.
The cost analyses that came out around the N1's release convinced me to go with an unlocked phone once my contract runs out. Like you, I was waiting (another year and a half to go). Although the N1 will no doubt be eclipsed by newer models at that point, I am sad to see this direct-buy option go away.
Sometimes, I come within earshot of a parent talking to their kid, and I happen to notice that the parent is talking as though the kid is an adult. This always surprises me a little, and the fact that it is surprising makes me sad, if I think about it.
I'm not sure how much team size is relevant here. You're still creating project history through a series of discussions and decisions, things that a bug tracker can record quite well if used properly. Every team also has turnover. Having your project's history recorded in written form can be invaluable for new (and old) developers to research why something was done a certain way, and not have to rely on memory and hearsay to do it.