This was not a dive at all. My take on it at the time and now watching the replay is as follows:

1. He gets knocked down fairly hard.

2. He remains motionless because the player who knocked him down is directly above him taking a couple steps on either side of him. His simply trying to avoid getting stepped on in a vital area until that player moves. It's even possible that if he stood up immediately, he would have fouled or injury the swedish player.

3. The goal was scored within 1 second of when he was knocked down. I'm not sure what else he could have done.

I'm not saying there aren't dives in soccer and that it's not a shameful part of the sport, but this is a terrible example of such.

F-town blues isn't disputing whether faking injury is bad. He is disputing whether the example from the Sweden-Greece game is a fake injury.

I agree with F-town that it is not. Watch a replay of that goal online. There is at most one second of time elapsed from when the Greek player was hit (hard!) to when the goal is scored.

There are many more egregious examples of faking to be found to support Kaufman's position. There are also refs out there who give yellow and red cards for such behavior, but not nearly enough.

While I agree that some cultures are much more tolerant of this type of behavior than others, we can't pretend that Americans are perfect saints. Isn't "drawing a foul" a huge part of basketball strategy?

I've had plenty of straight male friends (and co-workers) announce their "man crushes" on friends, celebrities and, especially, office mates.

Office mates? Definitely celebrities, but not real people that you see every day. I don't think that happens very often.

I think men are quite comfortable discussing affection or man-crushes of "ideal men", in other words celebrities and other public figures whom we only see as an idealized image. (Am I more of an Aragorn or a Han Solo? More of a Michael Ballack or a Bastian Schweinsteiger?)

But I've never heard men that I know express any sort of man-crush on real people. (I wish I were more like our network administrator. What a hunk!)

You can be pals with, have great respect for, and think the world of these real life individuals, but most men I know wouldn't express that sentiment in terms of a man-crush.

After your previously critical article about taking a dive in soccer, I'm surprised you don't mention Torres' shameful performance. In the most memorable example, he's lying down on the field (again) and Schweinsteiger has the ball. Rather than play against Spain with a one man advantage or kick the ball out of play for Torres' "injury", Schweinsteiger walks over to him ball in tow, gently grabs Torres' shirt and coaxes him to stand up. ALL OF THIS WITH THE BALL IN PLAY!

Does Torres quickly stand up and let the game resume? Or is he truly injured and call for a pause in the play so he can be treated? No, he sits there for another moment unhurriedly adjusting his sock and his shinguard before he stands up again and joins his team.

Well, we'll just wait for you, Torres. You go ahead and lie down whenever you need a breather or your sock gets twisted. No hurry at all.

Monkey Pants, you're as gracious as the German squad that failed to kick the ball out of bounds when an opposing player was down.

If Germany had kicked the ball out of bounds every time Torres was sitting on the field, the game would still be going on....

I fail to see the problem with toys that come with a backstory, especially a backstory as positive and well-thought-out as the AGs seem to be.

Despite perceptions to the contrary, I don't think that children's imaginations work best with a completely blank slate. If that were true, we would just give kids a couple of differently shaped blocks of wood and tell them to go nuts.

I grew up with Star Wars action figures, definitely toys with back story. But that didn't limit my imagination from going far afield from the movie storylines. With the AG dolls, I find it even more positive that the dolls might encourage reading and learning history instead of just learning about wookies from movies.

Even traditional toys like balls and bats and hockey sticks or whatever come with a set of rules about how you should and shouldn't play with them. I don't think that many kids feel restricted by these. Some use them as opportunities to play the game as intended, but most use those as a basis to let their own rules and ideas take over.

Primed imagination can be just as good as (and sometimes better than) free-form imagination.

This feels a little like one of my favorite features on slate.com. They will regularly do nonscientific evaluations and ratings of items such as pizza, baby pools, beer, water guns, etc. I would love it if salon started doing similar articles more regularly.

Here are a few tips to make this project a bit more successful.

1. Rate more products. You don't need to go Consumer Reports on us, but pick a category and try to get about half a dozen representations or variations on that category.

2. Have a larger N. Again, no need for a 1,000 person survey, but the slate ones are useful in that they gather a small contingent of interested parties and often discuss any differences of opinions on the products.

Or did you get a job with Apple marketing?

Zacharak takes a snarky view of the "most anticipated movie of the summer"! Film at 11!