The other joke concerns the traditional British affinity for warm beer. "Why do the Brits drink warm beer?"
"Lucas refrigerators." Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 22:32 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:22692] Re: England and the Continent In a message dated 2002-10-13 07:17:40 Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think the perception--here in the US--that England is somewhat backward economically is due to the dreadful reputation of older British cars (vs. e.g., Mercedes and BMW). There was a great cartoon years ago in Playboy magazine: the first British astronauts were about to blast off in their capsule, and one looked up on the bulkhead, where there was a plaque affixed reading "Electrics by Lucas". I had a 1963 MG 1100. Six volts, positive ground, some weird nut system that neither wombat nor metric wrenches would fit. The electric system was always blowing up (including having the electric fuel pump fail, at night, on two different dates, on both the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge); a friend gave me two thoughts on that: 1. "Lucas, Prince of Darkness." 2. "Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and Lucas invented the dead short." Carleton
