In 1942, as part of the war effort, John Steinbeck wrote a book called Bombs Away: The Story Of A Bomber Team, reprinted in 1990 and picked up off the remainder table in a weak moment because for some unknown reason I had gone on a mild Steinbeck binge. And because it was cheap.

(And I note, in passing, that Steinbeck was part of a war effort, that there was a war effort embraced by artists and artistans and even most partisans; and that there is not now, has not been for decades.)

The premise of Bombs Away, in any event, was that American men entering the military would find that their natural-born civilian skill-sets translated nicely into the component parts of a bomber team; and that not everybody should want only to be a pilot, that there was honor in each job on the plane.

I was struck, reading the book so many years after the war, that much had changed. That I had none of those skills, for they were no longer a part of the life of the typical American suburban kid. What this has to do with our lives today, I shall try to sort out below the fold.

Crossposted at Politicook.net

Last time we talked about the gas laws mainly, and I realize that this is not exactly a pageturner of a topic, but is important for two reasons:  to have a basic familiarity with how gases behave, and to show that these concepts were worked out, in some cases, over two centuries ago.  I find this fascinating, because everything was done by hand.  No computers, no calculators, no slide rules, and only the most basic of instrumentation (basically a balance and a crude barometer).

This time we will look at a few specialized applications for gases, and then a look at a few gases of particular interest.  If your favorite is not covered, speak up in a comment!

In this diary posted earlier this morning, Austinitis calls Obama supporters "tools" for their loyalty to delegate math. Below is the humble opinion of one such tool:

So let's touch on an argument which came up after Ohio and Texas and seems (for whatever reason) to be getting a lot of play once again. It usually goes something like this:

Hillary's wins in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, while embarrassing for Obama, don't actually change the likely outcome of the election. During February Obama was able to acquire a substantial lead in pledged delegates and, because the Democratic primaries grant delegates proportionally, Hillary won't be able to overcome that advantage. Since Obama will have the lead in pledged delegates, super-delegates will feel obligated (both by moral and by political reasons) to respect the popular will and support Obama.

After the holidays, I realized I was in a bit of a reporting slump. So instead of writing that many diaries (at least ones that require a lot of work, anyhow) I've been focusing on improving my beat coverage.

I had a dynamic day yesterday, but this morning I got an e-mail that served as a wake-up call. A DKos user wrote to ask me if I could offer any help to the Pretty Bird Women's House in South Dakota, which is having some trouble with the local city council.

I'm too far away to do anything about it personally, but I decided that what I can do is help Kossacks learn how to get the attention of your local and regional media.

Use your newfound power for good -- not evil! ;-)

This morning, the not-always-so-helpful NPR came up with a goodie of which we should all be reminded-- Yes, dear, there really is an official CyberCemetery !

It is located at-- (can you stand the irony?)--- the University of North Texas. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/

It contains the digital records of the 9/11 Commission and all kinds of other goodies involving things that were/are on the public record. This means audio and video stuff, as well as reports.

More over the fold...

In my last diary I mentioned technological literacy without providing much definition or context to the concept.  This caused quite a bit of misunderstanding and confusion. And so I find it necessary to explain what technological literacy is, and why it is important to have the technologically literate in any successful society.

The ability to operate tools is the main difference between humans and the other intelligent forms of life.  Civilizations are the product of tool users.  About the only thing humans can actually build by hand is a clay pinch pot--everything else requires tools.

Because everything we use requires tools to make, tool creation represents the most sophisticated form of manufacture.  It is difficult to make DRAM chips: it is much MORE difficult to make the tools that can make the DRAM chips.  And of course, it is insanely difficult to make the tools that can produce those DRAM making tools, etc.

My county's annual Harvest Democratic Dinner is happening this weekend.  I didn't get an invite. Neither did my sister-in-law.  Despite the fact that both of us contributed to multiple local candidates and the Democratic party.  I hosted two fundraisers for Jon Tester, and my father is running for state Legislature.  My mother-in-law got one addressed to her, and her husband.  Her husband died last year and she has made multiple requests to get her address corrected, because receiving invitations to her deceased husband are painful. There are multiple people in the county with their lists, none are complete, nor shared.  If you are not on the list of the person that did the mailing, you didn't get an invite.  That's bad.   Not only is it money that didn't get collected, it is the opportunity for a larger gathering that both energizes the party and allows for precinct organization.

We will win in November, when we have strong leaders, who lead the polls not follow the polls, who courageously stand for principles not double talk a flexible position, who can be clearly identified by all as being noble, good and true instead of the corrupt incompetence that is now our country's leadership. When we have a very good candidate who we feel should have a leadership position on an issue, we nominate a ordinary person from the floor of the convention, to speak for this issue. This is a tool for bringing backbone and courage into our democratic party. We have a wonderful example where Charlie Underwood spoke at Democratic Farm Labor (DFL) party convention in Minnesota for peace. He spoke eloquently from the heart. If you click on "Senate candidate Charlie Underwood at the DFL state convention" at this link, you can hear the speech: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/... It is truly a speech from the heart, speaking the truth to power. At the same link, is a summary of the convention and a recording of the question and answer period.

For years now, progressives have lamented the apparent monopoly that the Right has on framing the public debate.  There have been a variety of attempts to remedy this situation, from books like George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, to blogs like Jeffrey Feldman's Frame Shop.  This is an important discussion, and vital to the future success of progressive ideas.  At The Opportunity Agenda we'd like to offer our own contribution to this effort.

We have outlined a frame that we believe can promote progressive ideas and recapture our national values discussion from the Right.  We call it the Opportunity Frame.  In collaboration with The SPIN Project, we have produced a communications toolkit that outlines this frame and provides concrete tools and case studies to help implement it.  Click here to read American Opportunity: A Communications Toolkit, or continue reading about this frame and take our poll after the jump.

MS Word? Next Ben Domenech? What?

It happened so long ago, but remember when Oregon guy outed Ben as a plagiarist? A flurry of Google activity ensued as more and more examples of Ben's intransigence flooded the blogosphere.

Are you fairly proficient with Word? Do you know how to run macros? Or do you want to learn how?

I'll explain the relationship between Ben and Word below the fold.

First diary. Be gentle.

Have you ever wished you could simultaneously look up a term in this site's tag list and on the dKosopedia?

Or that, when you come across a political term on another site, you could quickly pull up that term's dKosopedia entry and related Daily Kos diaries?

Well, I did, so I wrote a little javascript bookmarklet that does just that. (script and instructions below the fold...)

Note: I'm not a javascript pro, and I've only tested it in Safari and Firefox. It doesn't work correctly in Firefox -- the dKosopedia frame overwrites the diary frame due to a redirect. Feel free to make improvements/suggestions!

Mack Reed over at LAVOICE.ORG has made the following banners available for use by progressive bloggers:

Distribute widely!