5 ms·

On belts, pants and logic

50 points by mike_esspe 14y ago

kenko 14y ago
"The war became total, and patriotic citizenry in belted uniforms provided the fodder for cannons. In this sense, the belted trousers were inevitable. They are the very essence of modernity, crowning 300 years of advanced political thought." Love it.
javert 14y ago
Terrible writing style.
- eru 14y ago
  Any details? I actually found it quite readable.
simonsarris 14y ago
Very neat! But slight nit, I think he's wrong about one detail. Specifically this part: > The reason the governments needed to economize even on the cheapest materials (hence the disgusting military uniforms of the 20th century) is that millions of ordinary people were drafted into the armies, where they perished by millions in the machine-gun crossfire, displaying their gut on the barbed wire. This, of course, is the heritance of the glorious French Revolution with its achievement of citizens at arms: the nation-states engaged into the war of mutual annihilation in the name of the higher goals. The war became total... The reason war was able to scale so violently was due to the Haber process, which is absolutely amazing in its own right. Says Wiki: > Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population. It is estimated that half of the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen that was originally fixed by this process; the remainder was produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria and archaea. Massive ammonia production that made guarding saltpeter reserves less critical. Germany (and others) were then able to create enormous stockpiles of munitions very quickly. Thus war became (more) total. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
- mr_luc 14y ago
  Interesting - those fertilizers also caused the demographic explosion that let Germany leapfrog France in terms of population (from parity to a 60/40 advantage). They also drew the war to an end. Germany didn't produce enough fertilizer and was dependent on imports, which England successfully reduced to a crawl via blockade. A prolonged inability to feed its citizens broke the will of the nation in a way that feeding men into machine guns never quite managed to do.
- vacri 14y ago
  It's possible for there to be more than one reason for the extent of the war, though this one is interesting. Also, it's not like this process just magically freed up all farmhands. One of the reasons why Italy did so poorly in the invasion of Greece in WWII was because the decision to invade came just after demobbing 600k soldiers so they could go home and help with the harvest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Italian_War#Order_of_Battle_and_opposing_plans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Italian_War#Order_of_Batt...
rayiner 14y ago
> ...their waistcoats became to be seen as the integral part of the folly of the ruling classes, and so they went into steady decline. Man, I'd love for waist coats to come back into style. Modern business attire presents a basic problem: where the hell do you keep your cell phone? Do you keep it in your jacket pocket? No, it's silly to keep your jacket on all day. Do you keep it in your trouser pocket? No, not only does it not look nice but because belts are actually a shitty way to keep pants up the weight causes your pants to fall down slightly with every step you take. A waist coat gives you a perfectly serviceable pocket in which to keep your phone, and allows the wearing of suspenders which are far superior to belts for holding pants up. They also eliminate in one fell swoop the problem of "shirt muffin top" which is where after repeated getting up and sitting down your shirt comes partially untucked and bunches up around your waist.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Also, cell phones need fobs.
  - snogglethorpe 14y ago
    > Also, cell phones need fobs. In Japan, at least, they generally have them (a conspicuous exception being the U.S.-designed iphone...): Japanese-designed cellphones almost always have a hole in the case for attaching a strap, and many people use it, usually buying a strap with a character miniature or something on the end as a sort of little "handle". These are really quite useful—my phone has been saved from falling quite a few times by its strap, and when digging in my bag for my phone, it's usually the strap that comes to hand first—and afford an opportunity for cheap and simple user-customization. I've always been a bit mystified that U.S. phones haven't copied this idea (which shouldn't add any cost or complexity to manufacturing). Surely somebody would have noticed by now... [Although Japanese-designed smart phones still have such holes, cases seem to have subsumed the formerly ubiquitous straps as a user-customization method to some degree...]
    - dllthomas 14y ago
      Right, it seems like "easily accessing your pocket watch, and preventing you from dropping it" was a solved problem once. I'm not sure why we forgot, in the US.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
This reminds me of the hesco bastion. It's nothing more than a hybrid between a gabion and a sandbag, both of which have been around for centuries if not millenia. It's just a huge rectangular bucket made out of wire mesh backed by sturdy fabric and then filled with dirt and rocks (most conveniently with earth moving equipment). It's a quick way to erect a temporary wall for flood control or fortifications. And it could have been made practical even going back to the late 1800s or perhaps even in pre-industrial times. They would have been incredibly useful in WWII, for example, and they had all of the equipment necessary to build them (even on tiny pacific islands there was earth moving equipment for roads and air strips). Yet nobody thought of it until the 1980s.
andrewvc 14y ago
Only $50/pair: http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php You all can thank me later; for the jeers and stares that is.
stephengillie 14y ago
I'm reminded of Shogun, where in pre-Meiji Japan, providing a uniform for all your samurai would be cost-prohibitive. Instead, soldiers were required to wear approximately the same shade of grey or blue or green.

50 points by mike_esspe 14y ago

kenko 14y ago

"The war became total, and patriotic citizenry in belted uniforms provided the fodder for cannons. In this sense, the belted trousers were inevitable. They are the very essence of modernity, crowning 300 years of advanced political thought." Love it.

javert 14y ago

Terrible writing style.

eru 14y ago
Any details? I actually found it quite readable.

simonsarris 14y ago

Very neat! But slight nit, I think he's wrong about one detail. Specifically this part: > The reason the governments needed to economize even on the cheapest materials (hence the disgusting military uniforms of the 20th century) is that millions of ordinary people were drafted into the armies, where they perished by millions in the machine-gun crossfire, displaying their gut on the barbed wire. This, of course, is the heritance of the glorious French Revolution with its achievement of citizens at arms: the nation-states engaged into the war of mutual annihilation in the name of the higher goals. The war became total... The reason war was able to scale so violently was due to the Haber process, which is absolutely amazing in its own right. Says Wiki: > Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population. It is estimated that half of the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen that was originally fixed by this process; the remainder was produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria and archaea. Massive ammonia production that made guarding saltpeter reserves less critical. Germany (and others) were then able to create enormous stockpiles of munitions very quickly. Thus war became (more) total. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

mr_luc 14y ago
Interesting - those fertilizers also caused the demographic explosion that let Germany leapfrog France in terms of population (from parity to a 60/40 advantage). They also drew the war to an end. Germany didn't produce enough fertilizer and was dependent on imports, which England successfully reduced to a crawl via blockade. A prolonged inability to feed its citizens broke the will of the nation in a way that feeding men into machine guns never quite managed to do.
vacri 14y ago
It's possible for there to be more than one reason for the extent of the war, though this one is interesting. Also, it's not like this process just magically freed up all farmhands. One of the reasons why Italy did so poorly in the invasion of Greece in WWII was because the decision to invade came just after demobbing 600k soldiers so they could go home and help with the harvest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Italian_War#Order_of_Battle_and_opposing_plans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Italian_War#Order_of_Batt...

rayiner 14y ago

> ...their waistcoats became to be seen as the integral part of the folly of the ruling classes, and so they went into steady decline. Man, I'd love for waist coats to come back into style. Modern business attire presents a basic problem: where the hell do you keep your cell phone? Do you keep it in your jacket pocket? No, it's silly to keep your jacket on all day. Do you keep it in your trouser pocket? No, not only does it not look nice but because belts are actually a shitty way to keep pants up the weight causes your pants to fall down slightly with every step you take. A waist coat gives you a perfectly serviceable pocket in which to keep your phone, and allows the wearing of suspenders which are far superior to belts for holding pants up. They also eliminate in one fell swoop the problem of "shirt muffin top" which is where after repeated getting up and sitting down your shirt comes partially untucked and bunches up around your waist.

dllthomas 14y ago
Also, cell phones need fobs.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  > Also, cell phones need fobs. In Japan, at least, they generally have them (a conspicuous exception being the U.S.-designed iphone...): Japanese-designed cellphones almost always have a hole in the case for attaching a strap, and many people use it, usually buying a strap with a character miniature or something on the end as a sort of little "handle". These are really quite useful—my phone has been saved from falling quite a few times by its strap, and when digging in my bag for my phone, it's usually the strap that comes to hand first—and afford an opportunity for cheap and simple user-customization. I've always been a bit mystified that U.S. phones haven't copied this idea (which shouldn't add any cost or complexity to manufacturing). Surely somebody would have noticed by now... [Although Japanese-designed smart phones still have such holes, cases seem to have subsumed the formerly ubiquitous straps as a user-customization method to some degree...]
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Right, it seems like "easily accessing your pocket watch, and preventing you from dropping it" was a solved problem once. I'm not sure why we forgot, in the US.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

This reminds me of the hesco bastion. It's nothing more than a hybrid between a gabion and a sandbag, both of which have been around for centuries if not millenia. It's just a huge rectangular bucket made out of wire mesh backed by sturdy fabric and then filled with dirt and rocks (most conveniently with earth moving equipment). It's a quick way to erect a temporary wall for flood control or fortifications. And it could have been made practical even going back to the late 1800s or perhaps even in pre-industrial times. They would have been incredibly useful in WWII, for example, and they had all of the equipment necessary to build them (even on tiny pacific islands there was earth moving equipment for roads and air strips). Yet nobody thought of it until the 1980s.

andrewvc 14y ago

Only $50/pair: http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php You all can thank me later; for the jeers and stares that is.

stephengillie 14y ago

I'm reminded of Shogun, where in pre-Meiji Japan, providing a uniform for all your samurai would be cost-prohibitive. Instead, soldiers were required to wear approximately the same shade of grey or blue or green.