New! Timesaving! Blogging! Technique!

Anti-PRT propagandist Ken Avidor has come up with another way to be repetitive.

It used to be that Ken would have to string his talking points together with linking phrases and, occasionally, punctuation. This takes time and effort.

But now Avidor's come up with a new timesaving blogging technique -- instead of repeating talking points, now he's just reposting whole sections.

For the past few months, a major part of every post on his "The PRT Moondoggie" blog has been the same thing: a cherry-picked list of negatively-spun PRT nooz; calling it 'news' would be a disservice to actual news (for non-propaganda PRT news, see the NewsCenter).

The nooz items are:

• "No $25 million earmark for PRT pork project in Winona, Minnesota"

• "The Swedish/Korean PRT prototype malfunctioned recently in front of the media."

• "The Masdar PRT (more computer-guided golf carts that follow magnets imbedded in the roadway) has been scaled way back, This setback got a mention in the NY Times and confirmed in this Bloomberg article."

• "The much-hyped PRT project in Daventry ended in fiasco."

• "The so-called Morgantown PRT (it's a mundane people-mover) was the subject of a student newspaper editorial after a malfunction created a "fireball" and filled a vehicle with smoke. The cost of fixing the Morgantown boondoggle is $93 million."

And lately

• "Mall of America Says No to Jpods."

This Luddite catechism has appeared in The PRT Douchenozzle on March 25, May 25, June 10, and June 15, as well as Dump Bachmann on June 10 and 30 (note that in the title of the June 30 post, ULTra PRT has become "Bachmann's fantasy transport system" [italics added] -- which should annoy Dr. Martin Lowson, ULTra's inventor).

I think Avidor might be onto something here -- a system that automatically blogs, RSS's, Tweets or e-mails the same thing, over and over and over again. It could save people millions of person-hours and billions of dollars worth of time.

Such a system could be called-- oh I don't know -- a Kenbot. Or Avispam. Doucheapp? It seems familiar, somehow.


Update (7/8): Need! I! Say! More?

gPRT Is Spam kosher? It's not really meat.

Reader poll time!

The Antiplannidor

Hey peeps, guess which anti-transit gadfly also opposes Personal Rapid Transit? It's Randall O'Toole.

That's right. The unshakable opponent of planning -- who calls himself "The Antiplanner," and whom every light rail-or-nothing opiner has a voodoo doll of in their sock drawer -- has a new piece in which he vents gallons of sniditude on podcars.

I've read comments by PRT-haters who just assuuuume O'Toole's anti-LRT stance means he's a PRT-lover. But as O'Toole himself notes:

Pretty Ridiculous Transit

...I've argued since 2003 that driverless cars are the reason why PRT, short for personal rapid transit, will never happen.

...PRT has attracted a fanatical following. Even though no PRT system has ever been built, they are convinced it is cheap, fast, convenient, energy efficient, and everything else that ordinary transit is not.
...
While [ULTra PRT] may save Heathrow the cost of bus drivers, this is hardly cheap considering freeways cost as little as $2.5 million per lane mile plus right of way (which probably isn’t included in the $41 million Heathrow cost).
...

While ordinary PRT vehicles are captive to the system, the PRT cultists attracted to my driverless cars article focused on a variant known as dual mode... The problem is that every dual-mode (and PRT) proposal requires a massive investment in new infrastructure.

"Fanatical"! "Cultists"! Klassy. Hey, who does that remind me of? Oh yeah: Ken Avidor.

Yeah, the Ovendoor has been calling us those very names, and others, for years.

So it's especially delicious to also read whom O'Toole turns to as a supporting reference: Avidor himself!

According to users (as reported by an intense PRT skeptic who also happens to be anti-auto), it frequently breaks down.

Ken and Randall sittin' in a tree / s-m-e-a-r-i-n-g! Yes, schadenfreude makes me immature.



gPRT Ken will probably claim O'Toole's PRT hate is phony, and part of The Conspiracy