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While reseaching something else, I lost myself in a loop of Wikipedia articles detailing the various pay scales of the United States government.  It’s an interesting look at a process that’s been heavily codified, but in no way even the slightest bit simpler.

As I understand it, pay grades go something like this:

Blue-collar, non-military, workers are paid according to the rules of the Federal Wage System, which guarentees competitive saleries for positions.  There are no direct pay grades, but instead the hiring department calculates acceptable payment according to the local prevailing wages.  Pay grades are constructed through polling and salary research in the specific area and field that the work is being done.

Military members are, of course, paid according to the U.S. Uniformed Services Pay Grades This includes members of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps (the longest branch name ever.).  There are a number of special payments due to military members, which are briefly outlined in this article on United States Military Pay.

Most federal workers, non-military, are paid according to the general schedule, which specifies pay grades in a hierarchy based primarily on years of experience.  This general schedule accounts for some 71% of all federal employees, but does not include Post Office or Foreign Service employees, or individuals employed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which each have their own specific pay schedules.

Senior members of the foreign service and other top level employees are paid according to the Senior Executive Service pay grades.  This should not be confused with the Executive Schedule, which defines pay grades of the president, cabinet members, and other top level political appointees.

All of this is roughly summarized in this document from last year that includes the actual dollar amounts accorded each rank. However, it is worth mentioning that a number of departments have replaced the general schedule with new pay-band systems.  This includes, as far as I can tell, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Defense civil service positions, the Navy’s civil service positions, the Department of Homeland Security, and a number of other groups including most scientific or medical professions.

A little more information on general pay grades and schedules can be found here at the office of personnel management.  I’ve yet to find a definitive account of how members of the white house office are paid.  This document gives their actual salaries, but not what grade or scale they follow.  As far as I can tell, they fall under the Executive Schedule, but the payments don’t seem to align exactly.

Fascinating stuff these pay-grades, but it’s a terrible pain to actually track down.  It appears the trend seems to be toward removing the seniority-based pay systems and moving more toward incentive based pay bands.  With so many different systems floating around, I’d be surprised if that process manages to gain ground particularly quickly.  Either way, I’m dead sure that it’ll only make this research harder the next time round.

PsyOrg.com has published an interesting article on lawyer’s attempt to provide a methodology for dealing with ‘super science’, that is, scientific experiments that could threaten humanity at large or at least significant sections thereof.  I haven’t read through the paper it references, but the quote at the end is quite striking:

Courts must develop tools to deal meaningfully with such complexity. Otherwise, the wildly expanding sphere of human knowledge will overwhelm the institution of the courts and undo the rule of law – just when we need it most” Eric E. Johnson

Science and Law don’t always work well together just like technology and law.  The people with the training and experience to understand the issues being questioned aren’t necessarily in an ethical position to appropriately rule on them.

Classically, science has been a relatively solitary profession or at least a contained one.  This is still true for 99% of every experiment done, but our knowledge base has grown to a level that some genuinely frightening and dangerous discoveries could take place.   How many thousands of movies have looked at that exact issue?

In a perfect future, these dangerous experiments can be secluded and quarentined, probably in space, thus minimizing the dangerous and capacity for liability present.  Until then, however, Earth laws will hold sway over Earth science.

The article outlines many of the dangerous of science overstepping its bounds, such as miscalculations, professional and financial incentives to minimize security risks, etc.  On the hand, reading this article I see an equally worrisome development.  When science is subservient to law, science is forced to make a case for itself and this isn’t a fair fight.  On any given day how much of the public will support research for research’s sake, the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone?  Not enough to pass a vote.  Even worse, the public at large has the scientific sensibilities of a sleeping gerbil.  No one is worse prepared to understand and evaluate the truth, validity, or function of science more than the general public.  How then, do we find the specialists and knowledge few who could make an informed decision either way?  There’s no easy answer to that question.

I am a pessimist.  I am a pessimist because I think the public is complacent and cowardly.  If anyone can argue that there is any risk whatsoever than the public will be sufficiently alarmed to pass an injunction.   Science will lose that battle every time, whether justified or not, simply out of fear and ignorence.  My fear is that the future of humanity and human understanding will someday rest on the precarious scientific jurisprudence of a man with a high school chemistry class under his belt.

As much as I can empathize with the legal conundrum of allowing expert testimony from the very parties involved in an experiment, I think that’s  unavoidable. The usual standards of the adversarial system have to be reappraised to prevent research becoming as bureaucratically slow as our laws.  Even worse, a public indisposed to science cannot harrass and subdue research with an irrational fear of progress.  There aren’t always two sides and the presumption of truth needs to fall to science.

That said, the law has its say and preventative injunctions must be considered even when illegal conduct isn’t necessarily about to take place.  I would just want to see the bar placed high and the court strict against fearmongers, junk scientists, and superstition.

First, an article on the Fourth Amendment.

As a network administrator for a library system and a technical advisor for a cloud computer company, I have a certain vague relationship with electronic law.  More often, technical necessity and security best practices determine how things should be done, but beyond all this there are legal requirements that do have to be met and further legal protections that should be protected.

The key paragraph in that link is:

In order for enough trust to be built into the online cloud economy, however, governments should endeavor to build a legal framework that respects corporate and individual privacy, and overall data security. While national security is important, governments must be careful not to create an atmosphere in which the customers and vendors of the cloud distrust their ability to securely conduct business within the jurisdiction, either directly or indirectly.

Laws must be appraised on a few points.  Most importantly, how and why does a law infringe upon the rights of its citizens.  Do the law’s protections provide an adequate compensation for the freedoms infringed?   Finally, does the law provide a mechanism of recourse for those parties that have been affected.

As I see it, any law regarding cloud computing needs to make data within the cloud fundamentally private, or private by default with a handful of acceptable cases for disclosure.  First, any non-intentional, non-targeted access by network administrators need to fall under a sort of ‘technician’s freedom’.   If an account is having problems and a technician logs in to figure out the problem and happens to see some emails, this should not count as a privacy breach, assuming that this was a reasonable response to the problem and that reasonable precautions were taken to prevent that sort of disclosure.  As usual, any sort of warrent of subpoena should be honored, but the standards of access need to be held high otherwise the integrity of the cloud are lost.

The idea that data must be encrypted to be considered secure seems faulty.  Certainly data that is put up for public or open access is not ‘protected’.  An open facebook page has no assumption of privacy, but an uploaded google doc does and should, regardless of encryption.  Forcing encryption might be good technically (and probably is), but it does not serve any particular useful legal standard.  Rather, saying that only encrypted documents are private within the cloud, suggests that the cloud, regardless of any user access that a customer would logically or contractual expect, has no protections whatsoever.  A different analogy than the ‘locked briefcase’ should be considered.

‘I smelled something’ type police work should not be encouraged on the internet.  Crime inevitably leaves a trial, usually a financial trail, and that’s where police work needs to start and end whether it be common fraud or the terrorism that will inevitable be used to justify some overarching data-mining operation that won’t actually help anyone.  Any terrorist dumb enough to put any easily found keywords in his online documentation probably would have gotten caught anyone, and anyone more clever than that is going to be lost within the the billions of terabytes of data online.  That’s another argument altogether, but as far as fledging cloud computer is concerned, some decent privacy laws are an absolute requirement both to reassure the customer and to bind the providers into a respect for privacy and security that, thus far, has been noticeably lax, as the frequent data breaches suggest.

In America, there’s a simmering resentment towards “liberals” and “leftists” within some parts of the country that always astounds me.  Despite the complaints, American is, from California to New York, and immensely conservative country.  Our most liberal politicians were be center-right in almost any other country.

Case in point, Norwegian Prisons.  There is no mainstream politician in American that would ever suggest island prison retreats or a hard cap on prison populations.  It is anathema to the entire basis of American “Moral Jurisprudence.”  We are still absolutely intent on punishment and that goes a nice way towards are record prison population.  Arcane and draconian drug laws aren’t especially helpful either.

There is nothing new about treating prison system as an actual reform mechanism and American has taken it as official policy as well.  The trouble is not really some grand moral divide.  Rather, Americans are cheap, greedy, and spiteful.  As the recent healthcare fun has noted, our country has hardened itself against humanity in a genuinely frightful way.   Regardless of where the majority might stand, the loudest voice within American, however small, is firmly against any sort of social morality beyond the Bible and its dangerous interpretations.  Whether backed by a sort of inner xenophobia, racism, or some other indistinguishable motivation, our politics have become a battle between ‘somewhat reasonable’ and ‘barking mad anti-socialism’.

It is my firm hope that someday a prison like Norway has might become a topic of genuine political discussion.  It wouldn’t be my highest priority to put into practice, but any society that can see and appreciate the benefits of making prisons less barbaric and more humane is much improved on our own.

How do I know our media is borderline useless?  This. Original article and link here.

Sure the government would prefer to use the U-3 rate, but why does media choose to report it?  The U-6 rate is the actual number of people unemployed and underemployed, which is the only number that actually matters.  Some contrived formula for determining who ‘counts’ might make for a nicer number, but it’s useless as far as policy or good administration is concerned.

Maybe?  Kinda? Sorta?  Just a little bit?

I have a hard time with charity. I’m not exactly swimming in bathtubs of golden doubloons; every day that goes to charity is coming out of some other part of the budget. Still, I’m willing to drop some money here and there for worthy causes.

I always wonder though, where does this money go? How much of it actually makes it to the end cause and how much is spent on ‘administrative costs’?  Is the money spent where it can and will actually make a useful contribution or is the charity really just a self-propagating machine, using the money to advertise the problem, in order to attract more money?

Charity Navigatory has answered a few of the questions. For example, the American Cancer Institute has a 3/4 star rating and only 1 star for efficiency. Most of the money gets wrapped up in red tape it seems. Other similar charities such as the Kidney Cancer Association seem to fare much better (although they are significantly smaller.) Charities like the Scripps Research Institute, seem to spend quite a bit more on direct biomedical research.

I’d still prefer to know exactly where the ‘program’ money is used. 99% of the money could be spent for cancer research, but really just be going to a guy who wikipedias ‘cancer’ all day long. That would technically meet the conditions but hardly helps the world. I’m sure that’s not the case for any of these large, well-established charities, but, and you can call me picky, I’d really prefer to know EXACTLY where the money goes. I want to fund research, which means I want the dollar I spent to go to a doctor or a lab tech or a college that is performing actual medical/pharmaceutical tests for treatments or cures. That kind of breakdown seems rather hard to get a hold of.

Ultimately, I prefer more direct forms of charity. Giving to those that I know need it or can I use it. That’s tough to find, but much more fulfilling, for me anyway. This Charity Navigator is pretty great though. If I ever give a donation anywhere, I’ll be doing just a little bit of research first.

We have a new President!

Oh, and here’s a list of every President’s inauguration speech.

New President Today! The entirety of my political life has been under Bush the 2nd, a social conservative, fiscally liberal, anti-intellectual bumpkin. I’ve always doubted whether I was a liberal in mind and spirit or just driven by a bitterness towards his initial election, a malaise towards his policies, exasperated with his incompetance, and made bitter by my liberal enviroment. For the next 4 or 8 years I’ll get to see what a liberal government does. I have high hopes!

The election is over! Congratulations to Senator, ahem President-Elect, Barack Obama!

I was on a college campus last night. As the successes tallies up, Pennsylvania, Ohio, then California and victory there were yells and screams from every dorm there. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of students ran into the central quad and started cheering, playing music, and celebrating. It’s more enthusiasm than I’ve seen for anything outside of a sporting event, I’m genuinelly impressed and awestruck.

There is a lot of hope and aspiration for Obama/Biden. I’m proud to have been part of that, but the election really is only the first step. I’ve been a member of the permanent opposition so long that I can’t help, but be a little pessimistic, but that’s not fair either. I hope, more than anything, that the greatest expectations that have been placed on our new President will be met and exceeded beyond our wildest dreams.