One of the articles in my wife's genealogical magazines was about identifying military uniforms in old pictures to aid in establishing a date for a photo of a relative. She showed me picture of her grandfather and I identified it as early WW 2 NJ Army National Guard . Using that she was able to get his service record. We also have wooden letter opener with his unit written on it which confirmed my earlier supposition.

There is a picture of a group of people in front of a Catholic Church in Woodbridge in an old Polish neighborhood from the 1930s and from I could identify various Poles in their WW 1 uniforms. Poles served in French, Austrian and Russian armies and each uniform was different. Interesting to see a guy in the French sky blue uniform next to a.guy in a Austrian Polish and another in what could have been a post 1920 Polish national uniform. Really cool stuff for a uniform geek like me.

Military stuff really does give you a lot of useful landmarks like that to use, as well as the very regimented record keeping which can be a help too. :)

One of the really interesting things to me about this pic was it shows a time just prior to the world wide jodhpur craze- back when jodhpur was still the name of the breaches with the flared thighs and hadn't deginerated to a generic riding pants name as it has today.
After this periord most armies adopted them, and their jackects had the classic four pockets. The style people wax lyrical about the Nazis paying Hugo Boss to design when in reality he didn't do much to a style almost everyone had in WW1. - Well at least the Australians, Americans, British, Japanese…

I have accepted my first substitute teaching assignment for tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM. I will be instructing a science class at the same middle school that I attended from 1997-2000. Wish me luck! I am going to have a rockin' fun time.

You will do great kawaiidaigakusei. Sure you want those middle school kids seeing you in high heels? They can get pretty bad.

Always amazing how some fashions seem to take over almost without precedent, like flared riding breeches.

Jebus, Debera Harry was SO hot back in the day. One of my first crushes… one of many. :)
Great mix of footage in this vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2EoqW-tkcg

@Bravo- My theory about the breaches (and there is reasearch and a LOT of precedent here), is that it was simply because the Briyish army was so influential.

Jodhpurs originated in India as a style of traditional regional clothing for men and they were named after the state of Jodhpur by the British who were occupying at the time and took the style away with them, as they took Khaki coloured clothing, pith helmets, and many other things from the Indians like the style of having elaborate and full facial hair they got from the Sikhs, Pajamas for sleeping in, T-shirts (which were the original polo shirts).

Where they came from is unquestioned, why though is where theory comes in:
My guess is that it started with British officers adopting them for comfort and a bit of the native “exotic” style. They were so popular (as was the craze for ALL things Indian in the latter part of Victoria's reign), that they made their way into official dress, the same as khaki and loose fitting clothing had before them.
Then the fashion worn by British officers took off among the officers of other status obsessed countries, as it had with other styles before that. And it eventually made its way to rank and file troops, then to civilians all over the world.

If you look at a lot of old photos and illustrations you'll see peasents in Balkan countries wearing them, as well as American cowboys and farmers in the early 20th century.
Ya, they didn't wear bootleg denim jeans, they wore Jodhpurs.

@Kawaii- High heels, tight pencil skirt, tight blouse unbuttoned juuuuust enough to show a lacy bra.
These are what childhood fantasies were made from…

Flared breeches in the Russian army came directly from their own Asian experience as opposed to copying the British. The US, and other Europeans got it from Britain which was unprecedented as to that time Britain had followed not led military dress. See various MAA titles as well as Uniforms of the British Infantry. That is except in fatigue and combat dress which the British Colonial experience was very instrumental.

Then there's the simple fact that Hugo Boss manufactured clothing for Nazi Germany, not design it. Even if he was as buddy- buddy with Hitler as Porsche. It followed German military fashion going back into three 1840s.

Thank you both. I said I was going to teach, not go to jail! Haha

@Oz, I think you accurately described Paris Hilton's very awkward “Nothing in This World” music video.

I am plenty excited because there was a time in middle school that I wanted to be a middle school science teacher. This will allow me to try on a few hats.

Congratus, Kawaii! Hope it went well!

Booked the weekend off. Between two jobs, I've been working seven day weeks most of the time. I don't mind either job, but I'm burning out.

Worse than that, I'm starting to worry that this lifestyle is having damaging effects on me, psychologically. It's subtle, but it's there. I'm more … serious or something.

May have to make some kind of change, man…

You can't work all the time. Go enjoy yourself.

Banes wrote:
Worse than that, I'm starting to worry that this lifestyle is having damaging effects on me, psychologically. It's subtle, but it's there. I'm more … serious or something.

A serious Banes is seriously unacceptable! :( Time for a holiday.

The flat earth thing has reared it's ugly head again, well I guess it never went away but it's amazing that people still believe it. I watched a 200 proofs the world is flat video and it was funny and scary that people cannot see the absurdity of if.

Considering that at least one incarnation of the Flat Earth Society was later revealed to in fact be a carefully staged long-running practical joke, you'd think people would get it.
see Christine Garwood's The History of an Infamous Idea: Flat Earth,

Indeed. I watched that 2 hour video with very mixed emotions and was trying to work out if it was a prank, worryingly it seems not. .. or the maker of the video is having a great time trolling people and stringing them along

Personally, I've always believed that the Earth was fat. I mean… look at the equatorial bulge!!! :)

It's particularly bad during the holiday period.

Hahahaha!

The original flat earthers were pretty awesome. The current crop though are pretty lame.
Funny thing is it's a fully modern conciet- people imagine that in the past they thought the earth was flat till Columbus proved them wrong, but that's bullshit, they never did. When people first started thinking about it they came to the conclusion that the earth was round, pretty much before recorded history, because the horizon is a circle and when you're higher you see more of it, and when things and people go over it you see them disappear down, if you can see that far. It's totally obvipus and self proving, you don't even need clever maths or instruments to tell you.

ozoneocean wrote:
Hahahaha!

The original flat earthers were pretty awesome. The current crop though are pretty lame.
Funny thing is it's a fully modern conciet- people imagine that in the past they thought the earth was flat till Columbus proved them wrong, but that's bullshit, they never did. When people first started thinking about it they came to the conclusion that the earth was round, pretty much before recorded history, because the horizon is a circle and when you're higher you see more of it, and when things and people go over it you see them disappear down, if you can see that far. It's totally obvipus and self proving, you don't even need clever maths or instruments to tell you.

To be fair, though, people in the middle ages did think a lot of other crazy things about the earth (and about the things that existed in it). Here is the world map of a 15th-century physician.

LOL! That seems like a pretty idiotic map, especially for the time. More like a Tolkien fantasy thing that a complete amatuer just came up with after a drunken night? Because even back in the 15th century they had detailed world maps and great cartography going back many centuries. Even if they didn't know where all the continents were they were still well thought ou maps… unlike that crazy thing.
Maybe he was an early level designer for Mario games? :)

One flat earth theory I liked was that our earth is one of many squares on a massive grid separated by antarctic like conditions. Complete garbage but could make for a curious fantasy or Sci fi setting.

Then there was the fasinating idea that we were inside a hollow earth. One guy was so convincing he got the Nazis to fund his voyages to set up mirrors and telescopes to see the movements of the British Fleet across the inner curvature of the Earth.

There were Classical writers who said that the world was not a globe but only a hemisphere so allowing for the curved horizon but the other side was quite flat and there was an ending. Then there was the belief that below the equator was a realm of fire or a burning lifeless hell.

Then there are the maps that some belief show things the people of the time could not possibly have known like the Peri Reis map or the Vinland map. We know the people had gone there and in fact the Peri Reis has an exact map of the coast of South America repeated and the supposed coast of Anarctica are actually glimpses of various far southern islands on stormy seas with cloudy skies. But why did a German mapmaker name a whole continent for an Italian Explorer? One reason may be that the explorer was very generous to the mapmaker.

ozoneocean wrote:
LOL! That seems like a pretty idiotic map, especially for the time. More like a Tolkien fantasy thing that a complete amatuer just came up with after a drunken night? Because even back in the 15th century they had detailed world maps and great cartography going back many centuries. Even if they didn't know where all the continents were they were still well thought ou maps… unlike that crazy thing.
Maybe he was an early level designer for Mario games? :)

Haha! Unfortunately I don't remember the story behind it any more…the image is from a colloquium presentation that my student group put together a couple years ago. The department's medieval expert was doing research on it, probably because it was such a weird map. She referred to it as “four seas in an egg.”

I think one Arab leader declared that the Earth IS flat. His proof? That gravity bends light, so the light that the Earth is radiating is being bent around by gravity making appear round.

It's like denying that I hit you on the head with a hammer despite the big bruised depression on your head and the bloodied hammer in my hand… -_-

It's like the clip of some middle eastern politician saying the earth isn't a globe because it it did a plane could take off and wait for its destination to come to it. Hilariously not getting it.

As a matter of interest, how did he explain that we can fly around it or the photos of it from space? Or for that matter, time zones?

Lonnehart wrote:
I think one Arab leader declared that the Earth IS flat. His proof? That gravity bends light, so the light that the Earth is radiating is being bent around by gravity making appear round.

It's like denying that I hit you on the head with a hammer despite the big bruised depression on your head and the bloodied hammer in my hand… -_-

I should try to join the Flat Earth Society… Among the things I've heard them say, all the NASA"s picture from space are fake. The Sun and the moon circle the Earth at a few hundred feet above… It's quite crazy!… I've found my people!
–

irrevenant wrote:
As a matter of interest, how did he explain that we can fly around it or the photos of it from space? Or for that matter, time zones?
Lonnehart wrote:
I think one Arab leader declared that the Earth IS flat. His proof? That gravity bends light, so the light that the Earth is radiating is being bent around by gravity making appear round.

It's like denying that I hit you on the head with a hammer despite the big bruised depression on your head and the bloodied hammer in my hand… -_-

And the moment you try to argue with such a person about those things, they will deflect or ignore you. Yeah… like with my hammer example where they'll ignore the pain and faintness they're feeling when they deny that I did not hit them with said hammer (despite all the witnesses and the bloody hammer in my hand)…

Apparently the curvature of the earth you see from an airplane is due to the glass being like a fish eye lens. The video “proved” it by showing a curved wing through such a window. Honestly if have some time to kill go on YouTube and watch some of the videos and read the comments.

I was reading one flat earth conspiracy book in an online sample. He kept appealing to “common sense” and casual observation as opposed to rigorous scientific study. I loved his insistence on parallax as if that proved anything. It is there just that the distances are so huge it can't be seen and it occurs over thousands of years. It's like their head can't comprehend anything bigger than their own little sandbox.

They don't realize that their system requires more complex movements to fit the math than the vast Copernican system. So they dismiss the math as mumbo jumbo made to fool the gullible. It's like debating young earth creationists. Once you start going over the blessed simplicity of evolution and how it can't not be true the fingers go in the ears and they start repeating a mantra to keep their belief alive.

Ignorance is bliss as they say. The truth is a much more uncertain and worrying thing to look for. Speaking of which, I await Tuesday's re-emergence of on site stats with nervous expectation.