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Dimdim is an easy-to-use, competitively priced open-source web conferencing app that we’ve covered previously here on WebWorkerDaily. Today, Dimdim announced the launch of Dimdim Webinar Edition, which allows for larger web conferences with up to 1,000 attendees.
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Dimdim Webinar is very easy to use for attendees, as unlike other web conferencing products, you don’t need to sign up or install any software or plugins to join a conference. Hosts also don’t need to install any software, and they get access to an impressive array of features including screen-sharing, web site co-browsing, webcam video, text chat, audio and whiteboard tools. You can customize the look and feel of the webinar to match your corporate branding. Hosts can record webinars and get access to an analytics package for tracking who attended and how they interacted during the event. The app feels quite quick in use; joining an event is fast, and switching between presentations is snappy.

A useful feature is the Webinar Widget, which you can embed on your site (or elsewhere, like your Facebook Page, for example), promoting the event and letting attendees register. The widget automatically changes over time — while the event is in progress, attendees can join through the widget. After the webinar has finished, you can configure the widget to promote a transcript and/or recording of the event.

Didim Webinar is competitively priced at $828 per year, or $75 per month, and is free to try for 30 days. After the 30-day trial, if you don’t wish to sign up to Webinar Edition, you can continue to use Dimdim Free, which is limited to 20 attendees but otherwise has full functionality.

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collaboration

Open Source and Easy Web Collaboration with DimDim
April 4th, 2008 (9:30am) Bob Walsh 12 Comments

dimdim.pngAnyone who’s ever tried to collaborate live on the web with other people, be it making a presentation, sharing a desktop or just talking about what they see, quickly learns the difference between theory and reality. The theory is web collaboration is so easy. The reality is you need to jump through multiple configuration hoops, sometimes poor network connections and overly paranoid firewalls to get a hurky-jerky 256 color thing sort of working.

Enter DimDim. Its no-install web collaboration free Open Source shared desktop/whiteboard/PowerPoint or PDF presentation service works well via an Adobe Flash plugin. The Open Source business model allows for a free service (20 attendees max). But you may want to spend $99 a year to get the Pro service to customize the interface with your own logo and have up to 100 attendees. There is also an Enterprise edition with even more features.

Steve Chazin, Chief Marketing Officer (love that title!) of DimDim took me through a demo of the service that will launch next week.

What was remarkable was that while he was on a PC using Internet Explorer and I was on a Mac using FireFox, as soon as I clicked the attend link in his email, it just worked. Fast. No fuss, no muss. None of the death by lag or weird color shifts I’ve been tormented with by other web collaboration services. DimDim takes care of the plumbing so you can actually spend your time collaborating, or reviewing, or learning.

DimDim, which has been in private beta since its debut at DemoFall07 will launch a public beta April 10th. The company plans to extend video support beyond the presenter and ramp up other features like providing the option to store and replay completed collaborations.

In one of my other roles in life I work with a lot of small software companies, also known as microISVs. I can see how they could quickly start using the free hosted version of DimDim to do remote training classes on their

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collaboration

Opera 10: A Pretty Good Browser, But Will Anybody Use It?
By FREDERIC LARDINOIS of ReadWriteWeb

After numerous betas and two release candidates, Opera today released the final version of Opera 10, the company's flagship desktop Internet browser. Users who skipped all the pre-release versions of Opera 10 will be pleasantly surprised with the updates that Opera brought to its browser. These include Opera Turbo, the company's compression technology that makes surfing on slower connections more bearable, visual tabs, a smarter spell checker, and a faster rendering engine. Opera also still features a built-in email client and RSS reader.

Features

After testing Opera 10 for a while, it quickly becomes clear that it is a perfectly capable browser. It's got everything the majority of users would ever want, ranging from the 'speed dial' homepage to a sidebar for taking notes, which are synced between different machines, just like your bookmarks. There is a 'magic wand' that automatically fills in passwords from Opera 10's built-in password manager, mouse-gestures, real-time fraud protection, a BitTorrent client, and the tabs now optionally show a rendered version of the page for a more visual experience. The 'visual tabs' can also be put into a sidebar, a nice feature in the age where vertical space is limited as users have moved to wide-screen displays.

Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris.

Speed

In our informal tests, Opera 10 couldn't match Firefox, Safari 4, and Chrome in most benchmarks. On a MacBook, Safari finished the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 711ms while Opera needed over 5700ms. In daily use, however, these benchmarks tend to mean very little and we barely noticed any difference.

Even though Opera has always been a good browser with a very passionate user base, it never quite caught on with mainstream users. Opera 10 is definitely Opera's best browser to date, but chances are that even this new version won't help Opera to gain a lot of market share as other browsers now

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tools web

Answers to Life’s Worries, in Three-Minute Bursts

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By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
Published: August 30, 2009

Jennifer Tang had a problem.
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At a “speed shrinking” event, Diana Kirschner, left, reassured Lauren Wettenstein that online dating “is very normal.”
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Eight psychiatrists and psychologists offered three-minute sessions at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho.

“I’m engaged and I’m about to move in with my boyfriend,” she said. “I’m a little commitment-phobic. I just don’t know about being with the same person 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I really need to talk to my therapist about this.”

Ms. Tang, a 40-year-old librarian from Astoria, Queens, had an even bigger problem: Her therapist was on vacation. “Whenever she’s gone, I struggle with feelings of emptiness,” she said.

So Ms. Tang took her troubles to the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo on a recent Wednesday night — but not to look up advice in a medical book.

Instead, Ms. Tang went to talk about her fears with a panel of eight psychiatrists and psychologists offering three-minute sessions of what was billed as “speed shrinking” to those whose regular therapists were on vacation or to anyone else needing a very fast dose of advice.

“At first glance, this appears to be a funny, lighthearted thing,” said one of the therapists, Jonathan Fast, who is also a professor at Yeshiva University. “But what I have discovered is that these brief conversations absolutely turn into real therapy. You start with the classic ‘What can I help you with?’ and make a really fast assessment.”

One middle-aged man told another therapist, Diana Kirschner, that he was worried about becoming unemplo

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psychology

Hers Experimental Design Laboratory is a design company in Japan similar to IDEO in the US. Such companies are famous for rethinking and rebuilding common objects in innovative ways. The head designer and president Chiaki Murata envisioned Metaphys as a new stationery concept. Murata-san and Metaphys have extensive design experience and have been involved in projects such as Microsoft Xbox console design, the Hono electric candle and Uzu cyclone vacuum cleaner (both Red Dot Design Award winners). Metaphys continues that creative tradition with its clean and thoughtful stationery line.

The Viss Spiral Eraser (like the Kokuyo Kadokeshi) is a another approach to the blunt eraser problem. If you were to imagine an eraser that always has a sharp edge, what would you think of? The Viss Spiral Eraser is like a designer's dream that has become a reality. This spiral design offers a continuously renewing sharp edge with its screw-like design. Black, orange and white color erasers available.

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tools writing

n Praise of the All-American Mexican Hot Dog

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By JOHN T. EDGE
Published: August 25, 2009

Tucson
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A Sonoran hot dog prepared by Oop's Hot Dogs in Tuscon.
UNITED TASTES

This series of articles explores American cuisine and its ongoing evolution.
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THE SONORAN WAY Ruiz Hot-Dogs in Tucson is fine by Luis Galindo.
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Oop's truck in Tucson.
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The hot dogs are wrapped in bacon, grilled, then served with toppings like beans, guacamole and mayonnaise.
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Kraft Foods

Did Oscar Mayer start it all long ago?

“THE problem with American hot dogs is that they’re American,” said Tania Murillo, standing beneath a pink and blue bunny-shaped piñata, as she rang up an order of tortillas at Alejandro’s Tortilla Factory.

“A ketchup-and-mustard hot dog is boring,” continued Ms. Murillo, a high school senior. “They’re not colorful enough. You’ve got to make them colorful, and pile on the stuff. The best hot dogs come from Sonora,” the Mexican state immediately to the south. “Everybody knows that.”

In Tucson more than 100 vendors, known as hotdogueros, peddle Sonoran-style hot dogs — candy cane-wrapped in bacon, griddled until dog and bacon fuse, garnished with a kitchen sink of taco truck condiments and stuffed into split-top rolls that owe a debt to both Mexican bolillo loaves and grocery store hot dog buns.

Many, like Ruiz Hot-Dogs on Sixth Avenue, work step-side carts with two-item menus of Sonoran hot dogs and soft drinks. Set in dirt and gravel parking lots, beneath makeshift shelters, under mesquite tree arbor

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food

1.
2.
23. August 25, 2009 12:57 am Link

There is no such thing as “writing.” There is only writing about something.
Students need something to write about. So take your composition course and give it a topic that students are interested in. Teach writing; that’s your goal. But not writing about “how I spent my summer vacation” or “how I downloaded a bunch of fake facts from the internet and changed the syntax enough to make it look like mine.”

The best job I’ve ever done as a writing teacher, and the best student writing I’ve ever received, was in a freshman seminar that the students chose because of their interest in the topic. My students had views that they wanted to express, and the readings in the course gave substance to their views (and, in some cases, changed those views). Of course I used supplementary materials to help the students learn the conventions of academic writing. Some students needed serious help with elementary points, while others needed to take their sophisticated skills and try to get back to simpler style with greater punch.

The course demanded a great deal of me. The teacher needs to help the student rewrite papers by making comments that are questions about intention or meaning or clarity or syntax, rather than make comments that are judgmental or prescriptive. This is hard to do. It’s easy to write “unclear” or “didn’t you learn to spell in high school” or “you should use such-and-such a word instead.” It’s hard to write a comment that makes the student think the sentence or paragraph or organization through on his or her own. But the students cared about getting their points across because they cared about the topic. And that made all the difference.
— elderly prof
3.
24. August 25, 2009 12:57 am Link

Lynne Cheney — and Stanley - have their eyes set on universities for definite political reasons. Stanley may complain about “gay & lesbian studies”, as I’m sure the Cheneys do, too, but the answer is not more writing classes i

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writing

Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. Her books written for general and academic readers include Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, On Becoming An Artist, and Counterclockwise.

Dr. Langer has described her work on the illusion of control, aging, decision-making, and mindfulness theory in over 200 research articles and six academic books. Her work has led to numerous academic honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest of the American Psychological Association, the Distinguished Contributions of Basic Science to Applied Psychology award from the American Association of Applied & Preventive Psychology, the James McKeen Cattel Award, and the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize.

The citation for the APA distinguished contributions award reads, in part, “…her pioneering work revealed the profound effects of increasing mindful behavior…and offers new hope to millions whose problems were previously seen as unalterable and inevitable. Ellen Langer has demonstrated repeatedly how our limits are of our own making.”

Dr. Langer is a Fellow of The Sloan Foundation; The American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science; Computers and Society; The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues; The Society of Experimental Social Psychologists. In addition to other honors, she has been a guest lecturer in Japan, Malaysia, Germany, and Argentina.

Included among her books are:

Langer, E. & Dweck, C. Personal Politics. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Langer, E. The Psychology of Control. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1983.

Langer, E. Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Da Capo Books, 1989. (Translated into thirteen languages.)

Alexander, C. & Langer, E. (Eds.) Higher Stages of Human Development: Perspectives on Adult Growth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Schank, R. and Langer, E. (Eds.) Beliefs,

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psychology books

Why bother being nice?
A somewhat limited look at Western thinking on altruism

By Ann Harleman, Globe Correspondent | August 23, 2009

This slim volume by British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and British (Canadian-born) historian Barbara Taylor is an extended meditation on the question: Why should we be kind? Folded around this question is a more fundamental one: Why should - why do - we love at all? If “On Kindness’’ takes more than a hundred pages to arrive at, essentially, the answer Woody Allen offers at the end of “Annie Hall,’’ this book, like the 1977 movie, is nevertheless a fine ride.

The very different perspectives of the two authors marry happily here. Phillips’s earlier books - pithy and evocative, but often cryptic - explore various ideas not unrelated to the theme of kindness: “On Flirtation,’’ “Monogamy,’’ “On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored,’’ “The Beast in the Nursery: Curiosity and Other Appetites.’’ A lifelong practitioner of the talking cure, Phillips announces in the preface to “On Flirtation’’ his view of psychoanalysis as “of a piece with the various languages of literature - a kind of practical poetry.’’ In his earlier books, Phillips’s own prose style - a unique amalgam of the succinct and the wayward - takes on the teasing rhythm and slippery texture of the very thing he seeks to explain. The result captures but doesn’t necessarily clarify the nature of the human psyche.

“On Kindness,’’ in contrast, harnesses the beguiling energy of Phillips’s prose to Barbara Taylor’s historical perspective. Taylor is the author of “Eve and the New Jerusalem,’’ an award-winning study of 19th-century feminism, as well as a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft. “On Kindness’’ opens with a capsule history of the concept of kindness from Marcus Aurelius to Freud, touching on philosophy, literature, religion, psychology, and biology along the way. Added to this is a capsule history of the practice of kindness, with stops at the early Christian church, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Vic

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books

A refresher course for grown-ups

August 23, 2009

As schools return to session, some of us may regret all that we have learned - and lost. “Homework for Grown-ups: Everything You Learned at School and Promptly Forgot’’ by E. Foley and B. Coates (Broadway) fills the gaps in nine subjects, ranging from math to literature, science to art. Each chapter ends with a test; answers are provided at the back of the book. You’ll find the Pythagorean theorem; the Fibonacci sequence; types of clouds, dinosaurs, and architectural styles; the Bill of Rights; and the periodic table. It’s a rather classical education - except for the lesson about how to survive a nuclear attack.

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books

Dude, You Are So (Not) Obama
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

LAST week, if you wanted to use the latest slang to tell a friend he was cool, you could have called him “Obama,” as in: “Dude, you’re rocking the new Pre phone? You are so Obama.”

This week? Best not to risk it.

The sudden shift in meaning has nothing to do with the fortunes of the president, regardless of what the health care debate may do to his cool factor. The fault rests entirely with what has happened to the life span of slang, which seems to shorten with every click of the mouse.

“Obama” was one of the most noteworthy new entries in “U.C.L.A. Slang 6,” a recently released compendium of student colloquialisms.

And the word’s very inclusion in the dictionary signifies that its street cred has evaporated.

“I think that word has completely left us,” said Pamela Munro, the U.C.L.A. professor who edited the latest edition of that dictionary, which is compiled once every four years.

What’s a hipster (hepcat?) to do? Keeping up with the latest slang is at once easier and harder than ever. The number of slang dictionaries is growing, both online and off, not to mention social networking media that invent and discard words, phrases and memes at the speed of broadband. The life of slang is now shorter than ever, say linguists, and what was once a reliable code for identifying members of an in-group or subculture is losing some of its magic.

The Internet “is robbing slang of a lot of its sociolinguistic exclusionary power,” said Robert A. Leonard, a linguistics professor at Hofstra in Hempstead, N.Y., whose slang credentials include being a founding member of the doo-wop group Sha Na Na, formed in the late 1960s. “If you are in a real inside group, you are manufacturing slang so that you can exclude the wannabes.”

And that becomes harder, he added, as the whole world has access to your language.

Part of the problem is that electronic media are making it too easy to compile dictionaries like “U.C.L.A. Slang 6.” While slang dictionaries have been around in one f

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language

Filipino delights
(Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)
By Adam Centamore
Globe Correspondent / August 19, 2009
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At an unremarkable intersection in Quincy is a remarkable restaurant. JnJ Turo Turo serves traditional Filipino food in a casual, almost cafeteria-style way. Owner-chef Jervin Erasquin’s catering business blossomed into an 18-seat eatery at the behest of friends, family, and clients. Now, both locals and expatriates enjoy delicious liempo, grilled pork belly seasoned with sweet BBQ sauce ($4.99); robust chicken afritada, chicken in a tomato sauce with potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers ($5.50); and authentic kare kare, beef and tripe cooked with vegetables in thick peanut sauce, served with shrimp paste ($6.50.) Wash it all down with a cool calamansi or two - that’s a classic drink in the islands ($1.50) - and take in a Filipino program on the TV. JnJ Turo Turo, 143 Water St., Quincy, 617-471-8876, www.jnjturoturo.com.

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food

Kid (and parent) friendly
(Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)
By Kathleen Burge
Globe Correspondent / August 19, 2009
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There’s a reason many restaurants would rather see a pack of howler monkeys swing through their doors than a bevy of young children. Kids take up as much chair space as adults but they never order $14 pomegranate martinis. They annoy other diners, the people drinking those martinis, who may be slipping their baby sitter $15 an hour for the pleasure of a meal without sippy cups. Kids whine.
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* Restaurant Information Location & nearby information, directions, and more
* More Cheap Eats 50+ more reviews from the Globe

VIA LAGO CAFE 1845 Massachusetts Ave., Lexington, 781-861-6174, www.vialagocatering.com. All major credit cards. Wheelchair accessible.

Prices Dinner appetizers $4-$10, entrees $9-22.

Hours Dinner Mon-Wed 5-9 p.m., Thurs-Sat 5-9:30 p.m. (Cafe open Mon-Wed 7 a.m.-9 p.m., Thurs-Sat 7 a.m.-9:30 p.m.)

Liquor Full bar.

May we suggest Pan-seared sea scallops, mozzarella and tomatoes three ways, shrimp risotto, gnocchi.

And yet, once parenthood descends, there’s nothing more gratifying than a non-chain restaurant that welcomes your offspring and serves interesting food. We parents are easy prey: Add a wine list and we’ll be there every week. What Full Moon has done for Cambridge, Via Lago Cafe is now doing for Lexington, minus the play area. Via Lago, by day a casual place that serves sandwiches and salads, transforms itself at night, dimming the lights, stocking the bar, and hauling out white tablecloths and candles. There’s a kids’ menu with the usual suspects - mac and cheese, chicken fingers, pasta - but the adult menu, which changes weekly, is creative and well-executed.

Pan-seared sea scallops in an appetize

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food

Thai, fit for the king
In search of authentic spices, flavors

By Ike DeLorenzo, Globe Correspondent | August 19, 2009

Ever since I first saw him some 15 years ago when I was living in San Francisco, I have been having a not-so-secret love affair with His Majesty “The Great’’ Bhumibol Adulyadej - or rather with his photograph. Dressed in an ornate and heavily decorated royal uniform, the venerated and venerable King of Thailand looks down from the walls of every true Thai restaurant. I’ve noticed that a large and prominent photo often means the food is going to be very good. You don’t cut corners when the king is watching.

At least that was the case in San Francisco. Here in Boston, I’ve had mixed results. Boston hosts a few spectacular Thai restaurants. But at the majority of Thai eateries here, there is an unnerving tendency to remove essential herbs, spices, and ingredients that the owners feel are too challenging for Boston diners. Even with the king looking on.

I asked my waiter at Amarin of Thailand, in Newton Corner, why they do this. He looks around to verify that the nearest diners cannot hear us. “This is Newton,’’ he says, sotto voce. “They cannot have strong tastes.’’ So it’s not Amarin’s fault the food is bland, it’s yours.

Ideally, Thai dishes are a riotous, sexy, spicy balance of tastes, aggressively complementing and enhancing one another. Take the chili and shrimp paste out of som tum and you have the dissatisfying network-broadcast version of a racy R-rated movie. Next time, tell your waiter you’re old enough for R. Certain restaurants will be thrilled to make it for you. If they can’t, you probably shouldn’t be eating there.

I set out to get an overview of what many consider the best Thai restaurants in the Boston area (there are 178 east of Worcester). I polled some trusted restaurant cognoscenti and, yes, some actual Thai sources as a sanity check. I visited each of the resulting top eight places and tried a variety of dishes - three Thai classics at every restaurant, and then some of

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food

15 Fluid Apps You Can Build for Your Business
Written by Steven Walling / August 18, 2009 11:14 AM / 5 Comments
« Prior Post Next Post »

fluid_logo.pngFluid is a simple application for creating site-specific browsers (SSBs) on your OSX desktop. Fluid definitely wasn't the first SSB project and was inspired primarily by the Mozilla Prism project.

The advantage with an SSB is that you can take almost any Web application you use heavily and get it out of your browser, reducing tab usage, avoiding crashes, and generally improving workflow. Fluid is really for anyone, but the low barrier to entry and the effect it has on productivity make it an attractive tool for getting things done. Though it's been around for a while, few businesses have really taken advantage of its full potential.

Fluid supports advanced features such as user scripting, but you don't need to be a programmer to get some decent apps up and running quickly. All you need to do is give Fluid a URL, a name for your app, a location on your machine, and an icon. That's it.
Email

Especially for Gmail and Yahoo Mail users, a Fluid app can be the answer to your woes. Programs like Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird are great, but they fail to replicate the true experience that Web-based email programs deliver.

It's super-easy to build and extend an email app in Fluid, and far superior to any of the AIR apps for Gmail or Yahoo. If you don't have the time to really trick it out, there's the shareware software Mailplane, which is also built on Fluid but has a few more bells and whistles. Correction: turns out Mailplane isn't built on Fluid, though it is an SSB.
Wiki

Giving you and your coworkers desktop access to whatever wiki you happen to be using is a definite win. You get the easy access (minus mobile) of something like Evernote, plus the infectious power of wiki linking and collaborative creation.

One of the real beauties of using a Fluid app for your wiki experience is that it works with almost any provider, from installations of free software MediaWiki

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tools onlineapps

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For many of us, the extent of learning how healthy we’re eating amounts to glancing at the back of our food’s packaging, but FatSecret aims to provide a more complete picture.

The New York-based start-up recently launched a tool for food companies and restaurants to upload the nutritional information of their products, along with an interface for programmers to mash up that data. FatSecret’s Web site is currently a hub for diets, recipes and general nutritional information. These new additions will effectively allow FatSecret manipulate and port this system elsewhere, complete with official data from food brands.

As far as online dieting diaries go, FatSecret already has healthy competition from About.com’s Calorie Count Web site and LiveStrong.com’s Daily Plate tool. Lenny Moses, FatSecret’s chief operating officer, says his site will be able to get the best information by verifying nutritional values directly with brands, but I see little reason to question the data provided by the existing two sites. LiveStrong, for instance, has a verification process that involves “independent sources,” though the verification method for Calorie Count isn’t as clear. Both sites allow users to suggest foods, along with their nutritional value, to administrators.

I think the potential with FatSecret lies more with FatSecret’s programming interface, or API. At the very least, it points to a future where dietary information could be ubiquitous, if developers begin stuffing nutritional information into Web sites and mobile apps that deal with food.

As an example, Moses said a site like MarthaStewart.com could tap FatSecret’s database for the calorie or fat content of the site’s recipes, or a

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food health

Finding love out west

By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | August 18, 2009

All the smart people in Massachusetts know that the true power in the state resides in the eastern half of the state, mostly within Route 128, and certainly within Interstate 495.

So you may have raised your eyebrows when Governor Deval Patrick, he of the Berkshires weekend palace, began talking about being governor of “all Massachusetts.’’ You may have snickered, as I did, when his Friday schedule seemed to begin ever farther west.

Supposedly, Western Massachusetts is where Patrick is loved, or at least liked, even as his popularity is in free-fall elsewhere.

Statistically, the governor’s popularity has officially hit rock bottom.

The candidate of hopes and dreams, whose favorability registered as high as 64 percent last December, probably never envisioned a scenario in which his fondest hope would be an approval rating that surpassed 50 percent. Patrick’s latest bad news came in the form of a survey by MassInsight, in which a mere 1 percent of those questioned thought Patrick was dong an excellent job. You read that correctly. Considering the margin of error, his popularity could actually be zero.

Bad poll numbers are not anything new for the governor, whose popularity seems to have fallen off a cliff since midwinter. His supporters and staff will tell you that the recession has made this a dark time for governors everywhere, which is true. His opponents will add that the combination of higher taxes and declining state services has justly made voters angry, which is also true.

There’s always the chance that MassInsight’s pollster corralled a particularly crabby group of voters. While Patrick’s numbers couldn’t be worse, he nonetheless runs neck-and-neck in a hypothetical election with probable opponents Tim Cahill and Charles Baker. The folks pollsters talked to don’t seem especially fond of anybody.

If Patrick needs to get away from his poll numbers, there’s his weekend home in the Berkshires town of Richmond.

In Western Mass

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politics

Roads that are designed to kill

By Mark Rosenberg | August 18, 2009

THREE YEARS AGO, I was driving in Atlanta early one morning when I saw a body on the road. It was a young female runner. I called 911 and then ran to her. She had a horrendous head injury but still had a heart beat. I started CPR, but her injuries were too severe. She died in my hands. I wrote a column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about what happened to the runner, and a flood of letters came in.

Half blamed the runner, saying she should not have been running in the street at that hour. Half blamed the driver, for not paying close enough attention. Not a single writer blamed the road.

I took a photograph of the scene where I had found the runner. When I showed this picture to friends from Sweden they asked, “This is where you live? This is your neighborhood? Your streets are designed to kill people.’’ They said that the thin painted white lines at the intersection could not be seen at dawn, nor was there a raised bump to or a narrowing of the road to demarcate the intersection and slow down traffic. They said the speed limit should be 30 kilometers per hour (about 18.6 miles per hour) or less if we wanted pedestrians to have much of a chance of surviving. They also said traffic lights increased the number of deaths because people often speed up when the light turns yellow.

When Sweden removed red lights from intersections and replaced them with traffic circles or rotaries, death rates at these intersections fell by 80 to 90 percent.

Sweden has also adopted a philosophy called Vision Zero, believing it can eradicate road traffic deaths.

Vision Zero started about 30 years ago, when traffic safety researcher Claes Tingvall got the idea that we didn’t have to accept road traffic deaths as a fact of life. Tingvall and his colleagues said that these deaths were not “accidents’’ but were predictable and preventable. And they set out to prove it.

One of the ways they began to protect people was to put barriers down the center of two-lane

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