Part of the problem is they think they have. Many people in LA consider Sherman Oaks and Encino the suburbs. I guess they are compared to downtown LA, but they are still a few hundred thousand people living in the cities adjacent to them. I think they should buck up and admit its Los Angeles and get over it. Many of them would have to move to lower income neighborhoods to experience lower traffic and maintain their commute times. Some have suggested this will lower property values. We can only hope traffic will finally affect rents and that something will lower housing costs in LA.

Haha, yeah. The reason the 405 turns into a parking lot is because often those hill roads get blocked by falling debris. Even several days later there are lots of large rocks and branches all over Benedict Canyon and Sepulveda Blvd. If you make it through on those roads you probably got there way faster than the highway. The question isn't how much room or visibility you had: how was the traffic? Did you have to wait in line or did you get to move at your own pace? If you are in LA and you aren't waiting in line, don't complain about traffic

Usually this would be a great idea. Not sure how much I'd want to bike down Sunset Blvd however (especially if she has to cross the 405 which is less than 4 miles from UCLA). Depending on which 4 miles she lives from UCLA it could be a deathtrap on a bike, or the easiest bike commute ever. That said, many more people can bike if they live closer to work. This is an exception in Los Angeles, the decent jobs are often in neighborhoods that the average family cannot afford, and biking over the Sepulveda Pass (which is the 405's route and the problem under consideration) is not a reasonable option for most people. Remember this was a UCLA professor who lives that close, not the average worker.

You obviously don't live in Los Angeles. The solution is not to force urban sprawl. The problem here is that everyone lives far away from where they work (due to rent prices in various neighborhoods), this forces the majority of the working middle class to commute to more affluent neighborhoods for jobs. If you minimize population density, you maximize commute distances. The solution is the opposite, you need to create affordable living even in affluent neighborhoods, so that fewer people are using the highway to commute to work. Thats not to say you need a highrise apartment on the same block as the Beverly Hills Mansions, but if there was affordable apartments in the area, you wouldn't have all those maids and other workers commuting on the highways. This is all compounded by the fact that only a portion of the traffic in Los Angeles is local, there are constantly thousands of tourists and tons freight moving on the highways. Ideally you organize the city so that locals don't need to use the highways as often.

http://artsmed.org/ also http://www.sciandmed.com/mppa/ its a Pubmed referenced, peer reviewed journal. Focal Dystonia is a pretty specific disorder, and is more common among musicians than most other occupational groups. Finger splints are an effective mode of sensorimotor retraining. I can see how this could be applied to both your typing and clarinet symptoms.

How exactly is your Dystonia affecting your typing? Focal Task Specific Dystonia, by definition, rarely affects tasks other than those where the the symptoms originate. What treatments have you been seeking to deal with your dystonic symptoms? There are several potential treatments. It seems more productive to deal with your symptoms, rather than try to work around them. I'm a member of the Performing Arts Medicine Association, and can recommend several authors/doctors if you are interested. There are also several treatments you could try without medical supervision/assistance.

Maybe this has some other advantages I haven't seen mentioned, like the possibility of being used on Android or other mobile platforms? If its on the web, it should be accessible to more than just iPad users.