X-Message-Number: 22213 Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 14:35:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Subject: Rick Potvin Rick Potvin maintains a discussion page which is mentioned here from time to time. The page primarily consists of Rick discussing things with himself. Rick seems to feel absolutely no interest in fact checking. Some of the material is more or less on-target, but other segments contaierrors. Sources are seldom mentioned, and quotes are seldom used. The journalistic standards are below those of a college newspaper. For instance, we have: "There is a groundswell of support for encouraging the management, board and advisors to start donating 5% of their annual gross income to Alcor." One person has suggested this and has said he is willing to do it himself. I think one other person has agreed in theory. No other takers, so far as I am aware. The groundswell has not been visible from where I am sitting. I don't have time or interest to continue through Rick's threads one by one, but anyone who visits his site should read each page as if it has a big UNVERIFIED sign across it. One last point re intermediate temperature storage: Rick mentions Brian Wowk's design (which was described briefly in the last Alcor News at www.alcornews.org) as being "5%" of an answer to the intermediate temperature storage problem. This is meaningless and insults the creativity of the design and the work that went into building a prototype. The truth is that Wowk's system works as advertised, but may require purchase of a new Dewar, and like any system (including liquid nitrogen) it will have potential failure modes. Todd Huffman will be exploring these failure modes during the next few months, after which we will have a comprehensive report, to enable Alcor members to decide whether they want to pay more money for the intermediate temperature option. I have no idea why Rick found this so hard to understand, and his implication that he was instructed not to write about the system is misleading. I simply told him it would make better sense for him to wait till we have some data to report. At the back of my mind, of course, I was thinking that I would rather see a factual report than some half-baked speculations based on an incomplete understanding. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22213