X-Message-Number: 969 Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1992 11:57 MST From: Subject: Re: Paulle (Response to Charles Platt's msg #958) Dear Charles: Thanks for the response to the recent postings on Michael Paulle, including mine. We both think that the only way to avoid such situations in the future is to understand what happened, which requires first knowing what happened. I would like to know what happened. That mistakes were made in trusting Paulle with a position of authority in Alcor is obvious, and also not particularly damning---everyone is prone to errors of this kind. But not openly discussing what happened _is_ inexcusible. Alcor is growing very rapidly, about 30% per year membership increase. This means that at any given time one out of four of our members has been with us less than a year, so there are lots of relativly unknown people wanting positions of responsibilty within the organization. How can we spot the bad apples before they spoil the whole barrel? This is of direct interest to me since I have been elected president of the nascent Arizona chapter and I want to avoid making the same mistake. Moreover, as you point out, this is not the first case of cryonicists trusting the wrong person (e.g. Bob Nelson), and I have heard that Alcor also lost something like $100k by entusting that amount to a man who promptly went to Latin America for an extended vacation. Let us learn from these events by knowing and understanding what exactly happened. Finally, I agree that anyone who is a self-made fractional billionaire is also a shrewd judge of human nature, and would almost surely not take the advice of a man like Paulle on matters financial. That Mr. Bigbucks chose not to donate money to Alcor, even though he has a demonstrated commitment to cryonics, says a lot about his confidence in Alcor's leadership, who after all put Paulle on the fundraising committee for the Phoenix project. LL&P, Mark Voelker Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=969