On belts, pants and logic

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

> ...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.

"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.

Only $50/pair: http://www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/002976.php

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

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.

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.

Terrible writing style.