Mr. Know-It-All: Human Guinea Pigs, Cremains in Orbit, Surveillance Video
Dear Mr. Know-It-All, I'm a college student who makes money volunteering for medical experiments. Do I have to accept whatever fee the researchers offer me, or can I negotiate for more?
In principle, you're entitled to the same economic rights as the researchers, who likely spent long hours pleading for more dough from whatever drug company is footing their bills. So don't let the doctors guilt you into thinking that it's somehow unethical to treat guinea pigging as a regular job rather than a selfless calling. If they were the ones getting poked and prodded and restricted to bland food, they'd be keen to secure a fair wage, too.
That said, your odds of receiving a raise are practically nil. The supply of willing test subjects far exceeds the demand, a situation that puts human guinea pigs at a serious negotiating disadvantage. And since budgets are usually set long before the call goes out for volunteers, the researchers may not have much wiggle room.
Bob Helms, a veteran participant in clinical trials who edited the now-defunct zine Guinea Pig Zero, says he has managed to negotiate a higher fee only once, for an experiment that was unusually agonizing. (It involved catheters and pooping in baskets.) Helms banded together with his fellow test subjects and threatened to break protocols or drop out altogether, eventually persuading the experiment's sponsor to offer an $800 bump.
If you feel strongly that a study's hassles merit extra pay, Helms recommends waiting until the experiment has commenced before making your case. Having borne witness to your distress, the researchers may turn sympathetic and cough up some cash. Just don't expect to be invited back—assertiveness is not a valued trait in your line of work.
Illustration: Christoph Niemann
I've heard that it's possible to have cremated remains launched into space. Sounds fantastic, but what happens if the rocket explodes before escaping the exosphere? Will my heirs get a full refund?
Your descendents won't receive any money back, but you will be granted a second shot at celestial interment free of charge. The company that runs these missions, Celestis, is a subsidiary of Houston-based aerospace company Space Services. Celestis arranges to stash remains-filled containers on commercial satellites or scientific probes. (The ashes of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, for example, were placed in a NASA lunar explorer.)
But only a symbolic portion of each client's remains is blasted into space—1 to 7 grams, depending on which memorial package you buy. That thimbleful represents less than 0.1 percent of the total ashes created by cremation. "We do not launch the entire amount of cremated remains because such a service would be cost-prohibitive to the consumer," says Charles Chafer, CEO of Space Services. Indeed, getting a single gram of ashes into deep space costs a minimum of $12,500. (You get a price break if you want to make your final journey with a partner—the two-participant Gemini Capsule Option starts at $18,750.)
The upshot: If the rocket explodes short of orbit, there will be plenty of your cremains left on Earth to mount another mission. Celestis will give you top priority for the next launch, and your heirs won't be billed for the do-over. In any case, it may take a while for your remains to join those of Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry: Celestis has flown only seven missions since its founding in 1997, and two of those flights failed.
I was recently robbed while withdrawing money from an ATM. As the victim, do I have a right to see the bank's surveillance footage of the incident?
Whether or not to share the video—assuming it exists—is entirely up to the police. The video is now evidence, so even if you approach the bank directly, the request would likely have to be approved by the detective assigned to the case. And his top priority is catching the bad guy, not helping to heal your psychological wounds.
Still, cops are generally sympathetic to requests along these lines, so if you ask nicely—and don't come off as some Charles Bronson-style vigilante—you can probably sneak a peek. "The police usually work with a victim, unless they believe it is a false report," says Tom Lekan, a bank security expert at The Atlantis Company, a consulting firm in Cleveland. "Showing the victim the video is not unusual."
Be prepared for letdown, though. Given the typically shoddy quality of surveillance footage, even if the perp didn't wear a mask, he may look like nothing more than a grayish blob.
Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.
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25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek
It's the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, but Steve Jobs' eyes are dry. At the company headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he was presenting a set of new laptops to the press last October, I mentioned the birthday to him. Jobs recoiled at any suggestion of nostalgia. "I don't think about that," he said. "When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."
Here's what's amazing about the Mac as it turns 25, a number that in computer years is just about a googolplex: It can look forward. The Mac's original competition—the green-phosphorus-screened stuff made by RadioShack, DEC, and then-big kahuna IBM—now inhabit landfills, both physically and psychically. Yet the Macintosh is not only thriving, it's doing better than at any time in its history. Much of the attention directed at Apple over the past few years has focused on new products like the iPod and the iPhone. Click wheels and touchscreens have distracted us from the news that the Mac market share has quietly crept into double digits. That's up from barely 3 percent in 1997, just before the prodigal CEO returned to the fold after a 12-year exile. Any way you cut it, the Mac is on the rise while Windows is waning. Roll over, Methusela—the Macintosh is still peaking.
What's behind this autumnal upswing? Apple COO Tim Cook lists six factors: better computers, better software, seamless compatibility with Windows, marketing acumen, successful retail stores, and the belly flop of Microsoft Vista. (Redmond's lame new OS was merely the last straw; over the past two decades, millions have switched from PCs to Macs.) But the larger story of Apple's rebirth begins with the return of its cofounder. Jobs called the company he came back to a "beautiful Porsche speedster that had been sitting in a field. And it got really dirty, covered with mud." He slashed the product line, Picasso-ized the design, launched a wildly successful chain of retail stores, and turned the annual Apple keynote address into the high tech equivalent of a popcorn blockbuster. And yes, Apple did make better computers than its rivals.
There was something else at work, too. Unlike almost anything else dating from the era of Culture Club and The Cosby Show, the Mac has retained its vitality and cachet without ever becoming retro or kitsch. A sense of a cultural divide was there from the very beginning and persists to this day. The skunkworkers behind the Mac were self-styled corporate outcasts who flew a pirate flag and talked trash about the competition. ("We've made almost every computer that's ever been made look completely absurd," Mac teamer vgbfvrn told me back in 1983.) On the very first day I spent with the Mac team members, working on a Rolling Stone story two months before the January 1984 launch, they made it clear that they saw themselves as a new kind of digital hipster—silicon artists determined to take down the faceless giants dominating the industry. They weren't building a computer for some wonks behind a desk; they were building it for themselves. Jobs made the case when we went out for pizza that night (he was lobbying for the Rolling Stone cover). "What if you did a story about what a group of really neat people are doing in the 1980s?" he prodded. "They aren't in the garage with a set of drums and a few guitars. At two in the morning they're in the lab, writing software." (Jobs no longer begs for covers; now he manages the press so well that we beg him.)
25 Years of Mac.
Click on the image to see the full-sized timeline of Apple products.
Those original Mac rebels (including their leader) are now in their fifties, but the Mac itself has managed to avoid middle-age wrinkles and creaky joints. Forever young, it's associated more with Millennials than geezers, even though many Millennials weren't even born when that famous first commercial—Ridley Scott's "1984" spot—ran during Super Bowl XVIII. The Mac is Obama, Microsoft is McCain. Computer scientist Paul Graham summed it up in a famous online essay in 2007: "Windows," he wrote, "is for grandmas."
That generational perception is why Apple's long-running PC-versus-Mac ad campaign, with the nebbishy John Hodgman portraying the PC, has deeply unhinged Microsoft despite the company's dominant market share. When I mentioned the ads to Bill Gates at the January 2007 Vista launch, he went Vesuvius on me. "I don't know why they're acting superior," he said. "I don't even get it. I mean, do you get it? What are they trying to say? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it!" But that's not what the public thinks, and the sales figures prove it. Microsoft is now so rattled by Apple's advertising that it's running a $300 million counterpunch. The whole point of the "I'm a PC" campaign is to assure customers that they aren't pathetic losers.
Generally, when products go mass market, they lose their edge. So it's remarkable that with 30 million users, being a Mac person is still a statement. If the Mac share keeps growing, will that stay true? If 50 million people are using Macs, does that mean they're still "thinking different"? How about 100 million?
We may just find out.
Senior writer Steven Levy (steven_levy@wired.com), who wrote about Microsoft's Ray Ozzie in issue 16.12, still has his first Mac, seen in the photo above.
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