X-Message-Number: 22013
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 04:26:39 -0700
Subject: Is Tim Freeman as an independent observer of Alcor suspensions?
From:  (Tim Freeman)

Message #21972
Subject: Mysteries
From: 
>Charles also mentions Tim Freeman yet again, which sort of puzzles me.  I
>don't necessarily mean to push Tim Freeman into stating his
>organizational affiliations if he doesn't feel like it, but as far as I
>know, he's not a member of CI at all.  I thought he was an Alcor member. 
>Of course, I think a lot of Tim, and I'd regard any report written by him
>as accurate and honest.  Still, inviting an Alcor member to oversee an
>Alcor suspension is not really what most folks would regard as 'an
>exchange of observers'.

A valid concern.

I'm signed up with Alcor to suspend me if necessary.

Many Alcor members receive the newsletter and little else.  I'm a
member of ACS in that sense.  This is a barter deal in exchange for me
providing a service for them; the service is no big deal and I'd be
happy to describe the service to anybody I know, but not publicly on
cryonet.  Hmm, there was some paperwork I was supposed to do for the
membership; I suppose I should go ahead and get it done.

This arguably happened before the ACS/CI merger (any argument would
revolve around the aforementioned incomplete paperwork), so depending
on the details of that merger maybe I'm supposed to be a
similarly-flavored member of CI too.

I agree that my membership in Alcor doesn't bode well for me being an
"independent" observer of an Alcor suspension.  However, my choice is
to observe or not.  If someone other than an Alcor member were willing
to go be an observer and write reports, that would be better because
they would have more credibility, but that's not a choice I get to
make.  I do think I would be an independent observer in the sense of
being willing to blow the whistle if they screw it up, but I can't
prove that to anybody unless that scenario actually happens.  I'm more
concerned about providing incentives for quality work to happen than
to make anybody at Alcor feel comfortable.

The problem with observing these suspensions is that it basically
requires doing a standby for free, which means it will take an unknown
time commitment.  If there's no standby, it's even more of a problem,
since the interesting part of the suspension could easily be over by
the time I got there.  I think the right approach to this is to just
take the gamble enough times for the timing to turn out right at least
once, but I haven't done that yet.

My present employment contract will probably be over within a month,
so I'll be more available for that sort of thing.

-- 
Tim Freeman                                                  
GPG public key fingerprint ECDF 46F8 3B80 BB9E 575D  7180 76DF FE00 34B1 5C78 

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