
On belts, pants and logic - mike_esspe
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/398013.html
======
simonsarris
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>

~~~
mr_luc
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.

------
rayiner
> ...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
Also, cell phones need fobs.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _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
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.

------
kenko
"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.

------
andrewvc
Only $50/pair: <http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php>

You all can thank me later; for the jeers and stares that is.

------
InclinedPlane
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.

------
stephengillie
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.

------
javert
Terrible writing style.

~~~
eru
Any details? I actually found it quite readable.

