Fact-Checking the "PRT Boondoggle" Blog
A project of the PRT NewsCenter

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Down! Bad dog! Don't bite the Swedish Environment Minister!

The anti-PRT attack dog is at it again. What does he do upon finding out about a Swedish delegation talking to California officials about PRT? Well he attacks one of the Swedes, of course.

Kenwood darkly refers to Andreas Carlgren, who happens to be Sweden's openly gay Environment Minister, as "ethically-challenged", not expecting anyone would actually follow the URL and do some math.

What he's making a big deal about is that Carlgren apparently received too much in Parliament pension benefits -- what amounts to about $19,000* over maybe a seven year period. That's about $2,700 a year. Which he has paid back. And he's still Environment Minister. That's the extent of the Labridor's slam on Carlgren.

Oh, and notice how the Propagandist fails to notice -- or more likely failed to research -- that California Lt. Governor John Garamendi was Deputy Interior Secretary under Bill Clinton. Just as likely is that Kenny-Boy omitted that part because it would get in the way of his Talking Point that only Resmuglicans support PRT.

One last thing. Ovendoor blathers that--

The Vectus test track looks a lot like the doomed Raytheon PRT track.

Yeah. It does, but only if you don't look too closely. Vectus: compare the size of the guideway and posts to the workers standing next to it--


Then consider these dimensions of the Raytheon system--


The main tubular section of the Raytheon guideway is 36 inches across, and the support post is almost that wide; the entire guideway including the frames is 72.5 inches thick (over 6 feet).

So, yeah--aside from Vectus being much, much smaller than Raytheon, OK: they look a lot alike.

Just as he has so many times before, Avismores again shows all he can do is attack people, and reveals no ability to make any kind of informed judgment about PRT's technical aspects.



Extra Credit:
Go here and calculate the dimensions of
the Vectus guideway tubular section (the vehicle cabin
is 2 meters tall; answer is an Easter egg below)
about 19 inches, or 52.7% the size of Raytheon
Extree Extree Credit: Tell us what Carlgren's pension
has to do with toast. Or PRT.


* which sounds like a whole lot more if you say "130,000 kronor"
gPRT
Ken Avidor has surprisingly poor spatial perception for an "artist"

Saturday, March 24, 2007

How can it be phony if phones aren't mentioned?

This post by the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist would be good investigative journalism--if you couldn't simply just click on my Blogger icon and get the same information he's trumpeting as though he'd just discovered Waldo. Unlike Nedken and his Luddington sockpuppet, my Mr_Grant handle is just a name, one I've used for many purposes for over a decade. I don't use it to hide my real identity.

Labridor just calls my experimental Franken blog "phony" without doing anything a real TC Daily Planet editor would do, such as discussing the actual content (won't--or can't). And he doesn't tell his readers to visit Wiseline Institute NW Presents Mr_Blog's Left Turn, my main blog of liberal satirical comment. That would merely put the lie to his claims that only Resmuglicans are PRT supporters.

God what a jo e he is. For him, "good investigative journalism" is like that practiced by the Jeff Goldblum character in "The Big Chill."



gPRT
"Face it, the outdoors is just one giant Ken Avidor."

Friday, March 23, 2007

Smear, he wrote

The smeary rash is growing ever-bigger over at the Dump Mark Olson blog, and today's post is really, really itchy:

"PRT Proponents are Either Crackpots or Con Artists"
That's what I wrote on the Seattle PI forum ...and it was deleted. [ellipses in original] Source
writes Ken Avidor, enjoying quoting himself again (or maybe he's quoting Ned Luddington), as well as revealing that he isn't aware that the Post Intelligencer doesn't archive forum posts forever.

Further down, Avidor posts a scan of a Bay Area news article critical of Cybertran--which at 20 or so people per vehicle is really Group Rapid Transit--in order to share with us his enjoyment of seeing his own name in print.

Oh ho--but what's this!? Next he links to a counter-article written by Neil Garcia-Sinclair, president of Cybertran, and Avidor calls Garcia-Sinclair--

"a cybertranny" Source

This is really remarkable, because recently
Lloydletta's Nooz (sic)--where NedKen is a contributor--ran a post that was critical of liberals who are joking that Ann Coulter is a transsexual--


Lefty Bloggers Call Ann Coulter Transgender (Suggesting it's bad)... Autumn Sandeen calls them on it at Pam's House Blend. Source

Surely Lloydletta can't mean that it's Bad to call the venomous viper of the right 'Man Coulter' and joke about Adam's apples, but it's Fine for Lloydletta team member Avidor to call a transit technology innovator a 'tranny'?

Where's the consistency? Where are the reporting standards??? Avidor's idea of good journalism is (a) extended whinging, (b) vicious namecalling, or (c) it must mention him.

C'mon Lloydletta, you're good progressives. Get it together.




gPRT
Laverne & Avidor

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

See his crumby logic

(Updated Mar. 22, 2007) Why does Ken Avidor the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist hate toast so much? It's currently the central theme of his anti-toast, "gadgetsnacken" terror campaign, and frankly he's making even less sense than he usually doesn't make.

Pay close attention, now.

What Avidor keeps doing is linking Rep. Slappy Olson, Congresswoman Smoochy Bachmann, and even the Discovery Institute to toast, and using that to argue that only Resmuglicans like toast--and therefore toast is Resmuglican. Really--that's about the extent of his irrational rationale.

Personally, I don't care if George Dubya Bush has toast every morning before his three-hour bike ride, toast is not a partisan issue. And that also goes for toasters, and any other devices used for the browning or heat-crisping of bread products.

Think about it--what qualities of toast are inherently Resmuglican? Answer: there aren't any, because it's not. I think the basis for all this nonsense is that Mr. Ken Avidor personally prefers granola. Now, I like granola too, but I also like toast. But Ken insists that we should only have granola, and he takes his preference and tries to convince everyone to have breakfast his way.

Yes, I know a rude person once spilled jam on him and his wife while they were giving a workshop on Muesli, but COME ON -- at some point you have to let go of the anger.

The fact is that toast is nonpartisan, and it's a fact easy enough to prove. Lots of people and organizations from all around the world like toast, or are interested in the possibility of buying toasters. The European Union and the Swedish rail agency both endorse toast--are they Resmuglican? Of course not. Heck, all you really need to know is that the California Democratic Party endorsed toast in its 2004 platform.

So let's stop being distracted by this idiotic toast-versus-granola argument. We can get past it and come to the realization that, in reality, you can have toast and granola at the same time.

Toast and granola can be good together. How do you know you won't like it if you haven't tried it?

Update: He's still spinning - 1, 2 (3/22)



gPRT
Ken Avidor has won Best In Show at Westminister 3 straight years

Friday, March 16, 2007

Twin Cities humiliated at Bacon Invitational

Sports

Minneapolis-St.Paul hopes in the 5th annual Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Invitational Tournament in New York were dashed yesterday when its entry, Ben Labridor of Grand Avenue South, Minneapolis, was eliminated in the first round.

MSP fans in the audience at the Jacob Javits Center looked on in disbelief as Labridor, an anti-PRT propagandist and Transportation Editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, responded to each of the celebrity name challenges by linking them to Personal Rapid Transit instead of Kevin Bacon.

"This was the worst performance I have ever seen in all my years of reporting on professional sports," said Dan Patrick of ESPN. "Labridor's Personal Rapid Transit game plan completely ignored the whole Bacon-centric objective of the sport. "

"He really let down all the fans," said Patrick. " Face it, Labridor is a joke."

It was a disaster from the the very first challenge, when Labridor offered with the series Tom Cruise was in Minority Report, which showed maglev automobiles, which which are like The Jetsons, which is like Personal Rapid Transit-- instead of Tom Cruise was in a Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.

When Labridor answered his second challenge -- Ben Affleck was in Shakespeare In Love with Colin Firth, who is from England, which is where Heathrow Airport is, which is building Personal Rapid Transit -- the estimated crowd of 52,000 let loose with a flurry of boos and heckling.

The noise became so loud and abusive, only the official scorekeeper was able to hear Labridor's tenth and final series, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican, which is the same party as Rep. Mark Olson, who once gave a group of homeschoolers a lesson about Personal Rapid Transit.

The round was won by Clive Frandle of Memphis, answering Robert Vaughn was in Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff with John Lafayette, who was in Loverboy with Kevin Bacon.

Play resumes today.



gPRT
Ken Avidor is the eggman

Thursday, March 01, 2007

More from the Litmus Tester!

The Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist thinks (and I use the word advisedly) that this blog entry is:

Not funny.
Mr_Blog is David Gow.
David Gow is a PRTista... just like Bachmann, Olson and Zimmermann.
Go away, Gow


Source

Yup, at least he's consistent! Just like he'll vote for someone if they pose for a picture with a train, he even judges what is and isn't funny based on your preferred transit mode.

Read Wiseline Institute NW and tell me: am I "just like" Smoochy Bachmann and Slappy Olson? Zimmermann (a.k.a. "inmate #12696-041") is a lefty, but--UH OH, the wrong kind of lefty, he's "a PRTista" too!!!

The only overlap is PRT. It's all a big circle for Kiln Ovendoor, and it always leads back to PRT. Sounds crazy, I know. But he's the one who thinks Google Maps predicts the future (Light rail segment obliterated - heroic editor sounds alarm, 2/19). He wants me to "go away" because my being a Liberal PRT Supporter could cause his cognitive to go all dissonant.

Oh, and he again forgot to mention everyone else in the PRTista Brigade: The European Union, the British rail inspectorate, the Swedish Rail Agency, the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, Peter Calthorpe of the Congress for New Urbanism (the Smart Growth people), Booz Allen Hamilton, Arup, POSCO, the Korea Railroad Research Institute, EPA and HUD career staffers, the City of SeaTac, WA, the Hacienda Transit Oriented Development in Silicon Valley, the BAA company (operator of Heathrow and other airports), architect and urban planner Sir Peter Hall, the Center for Transportation and the Environment (NC), the city of Daventry, UK...

The Ovendoor thinks he's smarter than all of 'em!


PRTistas are we!
Born to be free!
Just like the fish in the sea!


gPRT
When will Ken Avidor learn--if he would just shut up about PRT, he would deprive me of material.