Not much time for writing today, but will knock out what I can... continuing from yesterday:
Swimming: This may as well have been called "The Michael Phelps Show." 8 gold medals in 8 events, what more needs saying? 
I will say, though, that I still think he lost to Cavic in the 100m butterfly... every replay I've seen, including the still photos that supposedly prove Phelps won seem to prove the exact opposite to me. But in spite of that, Phelps is clearly the greatest Olympic swimmer, now and ever. As for greatest athlete ever? Well, I don't think he is, though he can't really do anything more to convince me I'm wrong, short of transferring to track and field and beating everyone there too.
At the least, I don't think it's fair to call Phelps the greatest based on his medal count. Swimming is one of the few competitions that I think are what the Olympics are really about, but it also horribly skews the medal counts. In no other sport that I can think of can you win a gold medal for doing things less efficiently than you can. There is no such Olympic competition, for instance, as running backwards, or wrestling with one hand behind your back. Nor did the organizers create a high jump competition for each of the various styles that were used in the old days before the now-dominant Fosbury Flop was invented. No, if you can jump higher than anyone else in the world using the straddle technique, more power to you, but if not, you'd better learn the Fosbury Flop or not compete at all, because you certainly won't be winning any medals for being the best straddle jumper in the world.
Why, then, does swimming have competitions in the backstoke, butterfly, and especially breaststroke, when those are clearly slower than the freestyle? And then you have the individual medleys and medley relays, too... Phelps won only 3 all-freestyle events, and two of those were relays (although granted, those were the only 3 he entered), but was able to pad his medal count nicely with the "slower" style events.
All in all, good sport, good coverage... couldn't have asked for more from an Olympic competition.
Synchronized Swimming: That over there is swimming. This is synchronized swimming. No relation. Pretty much everything I wrote about rhythmic gymnastics yesterday applies here, including the part about Russia winning 2 of 2 in I-don't-know-what.
Table Tennis: Not quite as fun to watch as badminton, but pretty fun. Was quite predictable, though... the Chinese team won even over all the Chinese players other nations "borrowed" for this competition, as expected. I wish it could've been more competitive, but with 1.2 billion people playing it as a national pasttime, like Americans playing baseball, it's unlikely that much will change anytime soon.
Taekwondo: Haven't seen any of this either, except for a replay of one fighter kicking the referee in the face after being disqualified. I hope that wasn't the highlight of the competition, because I heard the scoring was similar to boxing in its atrociousness.
Tennis: Like football, this just isn't that popular at the Olympic level. Still, the top 3 men's players in the world showed up, and two of them got medals, a big improvement from earlier Olympics. And Russia swept the women's medals, why wouldn't I be happy?
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Time's up... Track & Field and the rest of the events to conclude this series tomorrow.