The letter was not actually written by John Cleese; just attributed to him. It's pretty funny in any case.

If you are interested in the history this piece (plus a few rebuttals from Americans), check out:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.asp

Cheers,

Bruce

Subject: America and England A Message from John Cleese to the citizens of the United States of America: In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Soverei...

I am so very tempted here... 8) If I may interject a note here as a person who has spent (misspent?) many years in the OEM auto supplier business: As a general rule of thumb, try to avoid buying any completely new car in the first 6 months of production, and if you can hold off, avoid the first yea...

Originally posted by Bill Glasheen: BTW, Bobby told me an alternate translation of the "pangainoon" characters. It's something like "strike hard, retreat fast", and that slogan could have been from a rebel group Kanbun frequented in his Fuzhou studies. It goes with the nature of...

One of my students, Norman Asbell, has opened a non-commercial Uechi-ryu dojo near Anderson, South Carolina (zip = 29626) . Norm began his training many years ago with Rick Potrekus (West Palm Beach, FL) then later moved to Atlanta and continued his training with me. He successful tested for and was...

Hi Ron: I think your scaffold commentary is spot on and illustrates an excellent reason for standards. As you correctly point out, standard training exercises provide essential reference points to compare the progresss of different students when you (1) have a large number of students or (2) are try...

Hi Rick: Absolutely no need to thank me for my post; after all it was merely a response to the very interesting exchanges you, Bill and Ron were having. In fact, like Ted, I thank the three of you (as well as George, Van, Dana and other contributors) for giving the rest of us much to think about dur...

Hi Dana! Long time no talk! Congratulations to both you and Heather (and the rest of your crew). Please also say hi to Bob K. for me. If you recorded the test and plan on dumping it to DVD at some point, please post me a copy; I'd very much like to see how you both have evolved your Nakamatsu-influe...

Some of his questions get quite a few responses. On the other hand, I could come up with a number of variations of this question that might be more interesting. How about you? :) Hi George, As you know, designing good test and survey questions is very difficult. Many consider it to be as much of an...

How difficult is your test for first degree black belt? Sincerely, Arnold Howard Associate Editor Martial Arts Professional I find the formulation of this question to be amusing. To a certain extent it's like the classic question: "When did you stop beating your wife?" ... you lose if you...

Since Rick has done us the favor of posting the steps in “vanilla kyu-kumite”, I will drag this topic on a bit longer :roll: to discuss why I personally believe that kyu- and dan-kumite can be useful even for advanced students. For me, the key is to move beyond the “plain vanilla” versions. Again: t...

But, Bill the Kumites that are being questioned on these forums ARE THE VANILLA KUMITES! That is why I posted the Vanilla Kyu Kumite Template! I wanted to make sure we were discussing the same thing. Hello Everyone. "Vanilla" kyu kumite, as posted by Rick, is what many, if not most of us ...

Does anybody have soem web sites to contact some of the other Uechi-Ryu Organizations? What all is out there anymore? I was looking at who to posibly affiliate with , but would like to know what there Rank Requirements are before hand, as well as where are the organizations schools. I have looked f...

Since this post generated exactly 0 responses :roll: since it was posted Nov 5 on the "Locate a Dojo or Teacher" forum, I thought I'd give it a try on the Bill's Dojo Roundtable: ****************************** Dear Colleagues: I will be making a 10-day trip to South Africa (Johannesburg an...

Dear Colleagues: I will be making a 10-day trip to South Africa (Johannesburg and Capetown) in April 2004 as part of a graduate school program. It would be nice to be able to do some Uechi-ryu training in the evenings after classes / lectures. Unfortunately, a few hours searching the Internet for Ue...