Quote Originally Posted by The Wizard
I would heartily like to object. You drive on the wrong side of the road -- you started doing it, and have never learned the right way. You're stuck in the Middle Ages! We continentals just realized that the right side of the road is the right side. All Enlightment, baby. Even your wayward subjects, the Yanks, understood that.

Although they still have your crazy metric system. I mean, you weigh what? Five stones? Yeah man, I weigh twenty rocks, or fifteen hundred thirty-four pebbles. And you say you're how tall? Five feet two inches? What? Meters, man, meters! METERS AND CENTIMETERS! Not every village its own metric system! Next thing, you'll have Chelsea supporters saying they ran six thousand seven hundred times the distance their keeper kicks a ball to get away from the riot police, and then Man United hooligans say they toppled a police van over weighing eleven thousand watches and then had to run a million large toes! Middle Ages, my friend, it's just plain painful to watch.



I think it was a case of French English mixed with dry French humor that caused this. Silly French... they really should learn some Wallonian humor, à la Goscinny et Uderzo

And really, get some help with your highway toilets. Professional help. For the love of God -- and for the love of me -- PLEASE! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

As I say:

English for eloquence;
español por sensualidad;
français pour le romantique;
en Nederlands? Alleen om kennis te maken!



~Wiz

There is actually an historical reason why we drive on the left. Before it was far more sensible, since it was easier to face an opponent such as a highwayman (don't say that you didn't have Highwaymen in France or Holland, becuase you did) by drawing one's sword with one's right hand. Also, It was the way the English drove their carriages. Since the coming of the automobile was not overnight, at one time both carriages and cars were driving on the road.

Coming back to the the thread's topic, the seljuks did enslave and massacre hundreds of thousands of Eastern Roman Citizens I the 1000s and 1100s. One could also say that Turkish expansion is the cause of recent turmoil in the Balkans.