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Mondays failed attempt to provide a 2 percent, across-the-board pay raise frustrated county employees.

Something would have been better than nothing, one employee said.

Another wondered why the issue was even brought up, if county commissioners werent going to vote.

The measure had my support, but I knew there was no point in trying to get the motion because it would have died for want of a second, said Ron Hook, Western District commissioner.

Eastern District road employees were an exception last year, when Commissioner Dan Hausman cut a position and gave them raises from the unused salary. A supervisor got $300 a month and the others received $100 a month.

A check of county records Tuesday revealed that Mr. Hook gave Western District road employees $25 raises this year in an effort to try and maintain a degree of parity.

I thought they should have done it (passed Mondays raise), said another worker who didnt care for the fact that road employees got raises.

The commissioners or any elected county official have the authority to change pay as long as the changes stay within their budget limits. Prior to 2011, there had been a gentlemans agreement to freeze the county payroll. The assessor, auditor, collector, county clerk, recorder and treasurer have maintained the agreement and not given any pay raises in the last four years.

Some county employees maintain that it has been nearly five years since they received an across-the-board raise of any kind. Others say their last across-the-board raise was only 1 percent.

But the two largest offices have had some room to allow for pay increases during the last two years.

Original post:
Word of no raise upsets county employees

Hello, etymology fans. Were smack dab in the middle of a real Seattle summer, and if youre anything like me, youre enjoying our sudden, sharp sunshine and warm temperatures. The yellow orb that lives behind layers of grey mist has finally reappeared, and it does strange, silly things to us Northwesterners (like driving us en masse to buy sunglasses and complain about heat waves). But that also brings me to this special summer word, silly.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says that we get silly from the Middle English sely, or seely, from a mishmash of related Germanic words. Something that was sely was happy, blissful or fortunate, lucky, well-omened, or auspicious. Contrast that to our modern definition, which describes any kind of behavior as silly if it is evincing or associated with foolishness.

The word as it was known to folks living at the tail end of the Middle Ages, however, had a more serious meaning, less Stephen Colbert and more C-SPAN.

Someone or something that was silly in the 15th century was deserving of pity, compassion, or sympathy, was helpless or weak, feeble, frail, insignificant, [or] trifling. In the 16th century, to give an example, silly was used to describe sheep, the iconically hapless creature, in bucolic poems. Silly was also a stand-in for the unlearned, unsophisticated, simple, rustic, or ignorant, for the weak or deficient in intellect; [the] feeble-minded, [or] imbecile.

Lets just say that you wouldnt want to be silly.

By the end of the 16th century, the words association with the mentally underwhelming (i.e. foolish) became more prominent, though the OED notes that its a bit hard to decipher just how the word was used. My sense is that it had a meaner streak.

This was softened somewhat by none other than Shakespeare who used it in Loves Labours Lost and Midsummer Nights Dream in ways more familiar with the 21st century. In the latter case, Hippolyta is skeptical of the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

Since the Bards day, silly has become, well, sillier, less serious, and thought of as more comic than plain dumb. This might come from the influence of the press.

In the 19th century, the London-based newspapers of Fleet Street would scramble for any kind of news, real or imagined, during the slow summer months when the city emptied in the hot weather. The Aug. 23, 1884 edition of the Illustrated London News notes, for instance, that the silly season having begun in real earnest, the newspapers are, as a necessary consequence, full of instructive and amusing matter.

Even with the advent of air conditioning in the 20th century, news was still slow during the hottest part of the year, with schools out, civic groups on breaks, and government in recess (the U.S. Senate still maintains a vacation in August). Echoes of the silly season can thus be felt today.

The rest is here:
Will’s word: ‘silly’

If news about Word, Excel, and PowerPoint makes you writhe with anticipation, watch this live stream of Microsoft's Office 2013 announcement. Microsoft hosts this broadcast from San Francisco.

Instead of talking tablets, the company is discussing the next edition of its Office suite, Office 2013.

(Here's a photo (left) that PCWorld Senior Editor Melissa J. Perenson shot earlier today at the event site in San Francisco.)

PCWorld is covering the event and providing liveblog commentary as well.

Although the company hasn't made any details of the event public, USA Today reported last week that the new Office will be the topic of conversation, citing industry sources. Microsoft previously said that it would announce details on its productivity suite during the summer, so the timing is right.

The news should be significant, as this new version of Office is the first iteration of the software that must straddle the line between the new Metro-style interface in Windows 8 and the traditional desktop.

From the leaked screenshots we've seen so far, the new Office will be a desktop app with some Metro design flourishes, and a touch mode that will make tablet use easier.

It's unclear whether Microsoft will offer a proper Metro-style app, or a version of Office for other tablets. (The latter is on my wishlist of new Office features.)

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In Progress: Microsoft Office 2013 Press Conference with Steve Ballmer

A shadow of a soldier next to a placard on the fence line of the 'Camp Five' detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Jan. 19, 2012. (Jim Watson, AFP, Getty Images)

Can the government declare anything a Guantanamo detainee does or says automatically classified?

Thats the question posed by two challenges to a government order declaring any and all statements by the five detainees allegedly behind the 9/11 attacks presumptively classified. That includes their own accounts of their treatment, and even torture, at the hands of the U.S. government.

The government made that argument this spring at the start of the military commission trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others. The government says the defendants accounts, if made public without review by a government authority, could reveal details of the CIAs detention and interrogation efforts.

Of course, much information about the programsincluding torture of detaineeshas long been public. The CIAs so-called black-site prisons were acknowledged nearly six years ago by then-President Bush. More details about the program were released by President Obama in 2009.

The presumptive classification order extends to both detainees testimony and their discussions with their lawyers. In other words, anything said by a detainee, whether in court or to their counsel, will first need censors stamp of approval before it can become public.

The American Civil Liberties Union, news outlets, and one of the 9/11 defendants lawyers have all challenged aspects of the order. A Gitmo commission judge may consider their arguments at hearings next month.

Heres exactly what the government says is still classified, from the order it proposed to the military commission in April:

By extension, the government argues, anything said by the accused must be presumed classified, because they were exposed to classified information during their detention:

The governments order mandates that the court proceedings, which are transmitted via closed circuit TV to media and other observers in viewing rooms in the U.S., get a forty-second delay to allow for the blotting out of any sensitive information revealed by the defendants. If something censored in the broadcast is later deemed unclassified, it is restored on the court transcript. This is how the arraignment in this case proceeded back in May. At one point, censors blocked a defense lawyers comment that one of the defendants was tortured, only to have it later reinstated for the record.

Read more from the original source:
Classified in Gitmo Trials: Detainees’ Every Word

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) New versions of Microsoft's word processing, spreadsheet and email programs will sport touch-based controls and emphasize Internet storage to reflect an industry-wide shift away from the company's strengths in desktop and laptop computers.

The new offerings appear designed to help Microsoft retain an important source of revenue as more people access documents from mobile devices. The new Office suite also reflects the fact that people tend to work from multiple computers perhaps a desktop in the office, a laptop at home and a tablet computer on a train and a smartphone at the doctor's office.

Like an upcoming redesign of Microsoft's Windows operating system, the new Office will respond to touch as well as commands delivered on a computer keyboard or mouse.

The addition of touch-based controls will enable Office to extend its franchise into the rapidly growing tablet computer market. Apple dominates that market with the iPad, though Microsoft has plans to compete with its own tablet, called Surface.

The programs will store documents online through Microsoft's SkyDrive service by default, meaning users will have to change settings to store documents on their own computer. The programs will also remember settings, including where you last left off in a document, as you move locations.

The Internet-based services approach is one Google has been promoting with its own suite of similar programs, threatening Microsoft's dominance.

"This is the most ambitious release of Office that we have ever done," CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday in unveiling the new Office in San Francisco.

A preview version of the new Office suite is being made available online at http://office.com/preview. Microsoft Corp. isn't saying when it will go on sale or what the price will be. Those details will come in the fall.

Microsoft will continue selling the package as standalone software that can be installed on computers, but the company expects the bulk of users will opt for an Internet-based version, which comes with automatic updates for a recurring subscription fee.

Other features in the new Office include:

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Microsoft revamps Office for tablets, Internet