“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue,
but the parent of all the other virtues.”

- Cicero

Puke (Mark Sieve) and Snot (Joe Kudla)

Update:

Glenn Eller is a lanky, baby-faced 20-something from Katy, Texas, a cushy suburb outside of Houston.

He is friendly, quick to laugh and has an odd affinity for Oreos topped with Cheez Whiz.

He's single.

He's looking.

And when he leaves Beijing after competing in the Olympics, he's going back to Georgia and his day job: teaching other baby-faced 20-somethings how to shoot and, if necessary, kill people.

Walton "Glenn" Eller III — that is, Army Spc. Eller — is a marksman trainer in Fort Benning, Ga. And he's one of six members of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) that is competing in shooting in the Olympics.

It's not among the sexiest events to watch, so you probably won't catch him on the tube. But just because shooting doesn't make for good TV doesn't mean it's lacking in drama.

Not when you consider that our nation is at war.

And members of our military are competing against military personnel from countries we have strained relationships with.

And we're competing in a country with the kind of human rights record that forced the Olympic torch to be hidden from protesters.

So while the latest incarnation of the Dream Team has garnered the most attention, the 14 Olympic athletes in the U.S. military — six of whom are in the USAMU — likely feel the most tension.

Then there's this uncomfortable truth: During times of war, a lot of people die. It's up to military trainers, like Eller and fellow Olympians Maj. Michael Anti and Staff Sgt. Libby Callahan, to help make sure the American casualty numbers stay low.

Not to take anything away from Michael Phelps — whose surgeon-like focus has received a lot of ink recently — but the word "focus" takes on a whole new meaning when you're not only representing your country but also juggling life and death to protect that country.

Update:

Scouring ancient texts, researchers from Wolverhampton University found the jokes laid down in delicate manuscripts and carved into stone tablets up to three thousand years old.

Dr Paul MacDonald, a comic novelist and lecturer in creative writing, said ancient civilizations laughed about much the same things as we do today.

He said jokes ancient and modern shared “a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.”

“Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research,” he commented.

Lost civilisations laughed at farts, sex, and "stupid people" just as we do today, Dr McDonald said.

But they found evidence that Egyptians were laughing at much the same thing.

...

The world's oldest surviving joke "is essentially a fart gag", he said.

The 3,000-year-old Sumerian proverb, from ancient Babylonia, reads: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

...

Dr McDonald commented: "Toilet humour goes back just about as far as we can go."