Robert Menard - Ventilator Inventor Extraordinaire!

[Gregg]

Three videos. The first one without the balloon and two with a balloon. And let's not forget the now terminated website. A lot of effort for $22.00, and Canadian dollars at that.

... for a project which would win third prize in a high school science fair.

Must not be much of a high school.

[Gregg]

Menard seems to have given up trying to pretend that the Robo-Breath is anything other than a failed grade 10 project. He hasn't posted anything on FB for two days, hasn't mentioned the Robo-Breath for longer than that, and hasn't put up any more videos. Probably with good reason, what's to put up? He's already released three videos of it wheezing away just trying to inflate a balloon. Adding a fourth to the roster would just be final proof (not that it's needed) that the Robo-Breath has reached the limits of what Menard can do with Canadian Tire plumbing supplies and his abilities as an inventor. Continuing the charade is pointless anyhow given the total failure of Menard's GoFundMe donation campaign. The account has been open for two weeks and the only donations were the two made on the first day for a total of $22.

But hey, that's a round for the whole table, if they're drinking Labatt's Blue!

[Burnaby49]

Don't equate quality and price when discussing Canadian beer. Garbage beer is expensive here, even Labatts and Molson products.

Menard needed a lot more than $22 to fund his emergency beer supply for protracted social isolation but he's gone to the well too many times. Nobody believes him any more.

[Gregg]

At least you don't have Tree Frog, Tree Frog Light and Bull Frog Bock, From Brute Force Brewing.

(its a Cincinnati joke from a certain time, long before craft beer.
If you want to laugh as hard as I am right now, google some WEBN, and the Committee for Aesthetic Public Spectacle.)

[Gregg]

I forget how lucky I grew up. If you like FM radio that isn't classical music, you owe it to WEBN, the real life WKRP in Cincinnati.
It was the first FM rock radio station, and had a genuine sense of humor.

Other spots were for the "White Rose and Lilac Virginity Restoration Clinic", "Tree Frog Beer" ('it doesn't taste like much but it gets you there faster'), and a spoof on the Rambo movies entitled "Sambo: Real Blood Part Fo" featuring a black super-hero driving a rescue Cadillac and yelling "Hey, Chin Ho, Ronnie Reagan says you can kiss his white butt" before a jet fly-over drowns out the last word.
A cross-over between these spots and reality occurred in 1972, when Hudepohl Beer allowed some of its product for the Cincinnati area to be wrapped in faux labels for "WEBN's Tree Frog Beer, The Sleazy People's Beer",

[bmxninja357]

how can he save the world make a buck with other home mades out there already. like this one...



peace,
ninj

[notorial dissent]

Perhaps the usual suckers donors are broker than he is at the moment, or maybe they just don't care any more.

[Burnaby49]

I prematurely announced that the dream of the Robo-Breath saving us all was over. I'd thought it was dead until Menard proclaimed publicly that he, and he alone, was the genius behind the device. I assumed that the announcement meant that he was going to discard the 'international team of scientists, doctors, engineers, etc' and get back to promoting it himself as his gift to humanity.

However that assumption was, in its turn, wrong. Menard seems to have finally abandoned his device and that last announcement was just bluster. He's not mentioned it on his Face book page since April 14 and that was just a link to a sad little video of the Robo-Breath pathetically wheezing away trying, and failing, to blow up a child's balloon.

I can see why he's abandoned it. His Robo-Breath development GoFundMe campaign, with heady dreams of $100,000 in donations, stalled out at $22 on the first day and he's received nothing in the almost three weeks since. Even for one of Menard's schemes that's an absolutely dismal result. I'd have expected at least a few hundred for beer money but Menard might have finally gone to the well too often on failed schemes for even his dwindling band of followers.

[Frater I*I]

[The Observer]

Menard seems to have finally abandoned his device and that last announcement was just bluster.

Not only that, but now the first YouTube video is no longer available "...due to a copyright claim by a third-party." Did Menard commit intellectual property theft?

[Burnaby49]

Could well be. How would Menard, with apparently no relevant education or hands-on experience in mechanical ventilation devices, be able to design and put together something even as bargain-basement basic as the Robo-Breath so quickly? As far as I can tell he did it over a weekend. Maybe it was entirely his own idea, it's certainly no mechanical marvel, but maybe he took a shortcut by using somebody else's device. Having the video removed because of a third-party complaint would indicate the latter.

[Burnaby49]

Burnaby49 Note - For those of readers who have followed Quatloos' "New Posts" options directly here please note I've added a preamble to the first postion this discussion venting my outrage at how Robert Menard, a man who leapt into action at the opportunity to help saves lives, has been totally ignored in a New Yorker article extolling the efforts of organizations trying to meet the challenges of the ventilator crisis.

And a postscript to all of the above. Has Rob been discouraged by the complete abject failure of the RoboBreath? Not a bit of it! Menard is nothing if not resilient. After the Robo-Breath failed he wrote a new book which is now available for purchase!

FINALLY DONE! Available in PDF now! PM for deets and deals!

It's titled "Towards A New And Superlative Normal" and has a snazzy cover picture of a mall fountain!



Unfortunately even his YouTube followers have shown absolutely no interest in it. Perhaps, like me, they've concluded that he's just exploiting the moment by hastily throwing together a compilation of odds and ends from his prior writings.

He's also attempting to resurrected, yet again, his old scam, the ACCP. Maybe there's a new generation of suckers out there. Since he restarted the ACCP on April 30th he's had 74 people join his members only group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/329471911348490/

To my knowledge this Rob's third attempt to exploit the ACCP. He seems incapable of coming up with any new ideas and apparently has to fall back on the comfort and familiarity of his old tired failed schemes. As a senior citizen I can sympathize! He had his 56th birthday last November and, like the rest of us he's getting on and set in his ways. So back to what he knows and that means another round with the ACCP it is. We'll be reading about 96 Is Your Fix next.

[notorial dissent]

Fortunately for Bobby, his presumed followers have short attention spans and even less long term memory, so everything old is new again, unfortunately for Bobby they have equally empty pockets. He doesn't seem to figure that out.

[NYGman]

What ND said, but one more thing, It's a Book, his fans don't read books, they want a free YouTube Video, to spell whatever it is, out for them. Reading a eBook, is just too much of an ask. Heck, they can bearly read a paragraph, let alone a long post.

[Pottapaug1938]

What ND said, but one more thing, It's a Book, his fans don't read books, they want a free YouTube Video, to spell whatever it is, out for them. Reading a eBook, is just too much of an ask. Heck, they can bearly read a paragraph, let alone a long post.

His followers get their edjiccashun at the Google Institute of Technology, YouTube University, Facebook College and Twitter Academy.

[notorial dissent]

What ND said, but one more thing, It's a Book, his fans don't read books, they want a free YouTube Video, to spell whatever it is, out for them. Reading a eBook, is just too much of an ask. Heck, they can bearly read a paragraph, let alone a long post.

His followers get their edjiccashun at the Google Institute of Technology, YouTube University, Facebook College and Twitter Academy.

What he said.