AA (and Eagle) Uniforms

I have often thought of the same thing. When looking at old photos, or watching a historical movie the one thing we never think about is smell.

It's like when I started watching Mad Men and realizing how much people smoked back then. It was everywhere: buildings, homes, offices, etc...it occurred to me for the first time how aweful the world must have smelled back in those days.

People's homes and offices probably smelled like an ashtray around the clock.

This. These days, I can smell a smoker a block away.

Mix in smoking, lav juice, cooking with lard, HIGH octane avgas, ADI fluid, plain old BO, greasy hair stuff, along with miscellaneous and sundry other fluids and whatnot, and you've got yourself a funk-tastic smell-o-rama marinating in those pre-air conditioned terminals.

I'm sure it was enough to please even the most discriminating odor-phile.

In the Capitol building in Washington DC, there is a statue area. Each state can send 2 statues of personages of historical significance from their state. One of Florida's is John Gorrie, the "Father of Mechanical Refrigeration" aka air conditioning. It is an honor WELL deserved, considering Florida would be an uninhabitable mosquito zoo without it.

Richman
 
In the Capitol building in Washington DC, there is a statue area. Each state can send 2 statues of personages of historical significance from their state. One of Florida's is John Gorrie, the "Father of Mechanical Refrigeration" aka air conditioning. It is an honor WELL deserved, considering Florida would be an uninhabitable mosquito zoo without it.

Air conditioning (along with aluminum mesh screen) did more to eradicate malaria and yellow fever in this country than efforts to "eradicate" the little bugger that was the vector of the disease.
 
Air conditioning (along with aluminum mesh screen) did more to eradicate malaria and yellow fever in this country than efforts to "eradicate" the little bugger that was the vector of the disease.

While I nominally agree that spending more time indoors limits exposure, you do need to cull vector at it's source because you have to go outside SOMETIME (Amazon's efforts not withstanding). A lot of it is plain old common sense once you figure the bugger out. Drain stagnant pools, limit breeding areas, etc, but a good old fashioned dusting goes a long way, too.

Heck, growing up we had the tanker trucks go down each street spraying "stuff". Our parent's advice when this cloud of doom approached (besides insisting we go outside in the skin tearing tropical sun, drinking from the hose, and not bothering with helmets and nerf suits) ?

"Eh, just come inside for 10 minutes".

No dain bramage as far as I can tell...

Richman
 
While I nominally agree that spending more time indoors limits exposure, you do need to cull vector at it's source because you have to go outside SOMETIME (Amazon's efforts not withstanding). A lot of it is plain old common sense once you figure the bugger out. Drain stagnant pools, limit breeding areas, etc, but a good old fashioned dusting goes a long way, too.

Heck, growing up we had the tanker trucks go down each street spraying "stuff". Our parent's advice when this cloud of doom approached (besides insisting we go outside in the skin tearing tropical sun, drinking from the hose, and not bothering with helmets and nerf suits) ?

"Eh, just come inside for 10 minutes".

No dain bramage as far as I can tell...

Richman

<<< has small M.S. degree in Entomology dealing with the surveillance and control of mosquitoes :)

You're right, a lot of it is common sense. I spent the better part of a decade trapping, identifying, educating, and also killing the little buggers.
 
<<< has small M.S. degree in Entomology dealing with the surveillance and control of mosquitoes :)

You're right, a lot of it is common sense. I spent the better part of a decade trapping, identifying, educating, and also killing the little buggers.

<<< Relatively recent degree in molecular biology. My efforts were focused on finding the "smart bomb" approach to killing the things that bug us. Decided that "sniffing the dish" was not exactly what I had in mind when learning to ID bacteria, despite my Prof's admonishment to get over my icky-phobia.

It proved remarkably accurate, though...nothing like becoming semi-talented at a skill that is, after all, really gross.

Richman
 
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