Back off topic:

Penis.

It'll be a hotly contended title this year.
I suspect the nominees list alone will likely contain a huge amount of names.

Mark

I disagree. I didn't get the point. I'm a city boy and I have never put any form of object into a horse's mouth. Until today I had no idea this was a subject of possible controversy. If you received a point I suspect it was in a context of you already knowing about these things and Manc's remarks fitting into a pattern you recognise. But for those of us not included in this conversation already, bad analogies just cloud the issue.

And then the conversation went off on a irrelevant tangent that was easily avoidable by simply saying, "ok, that wasn't a clear analogy, let me make my point differently..." Which was an option that Manc apparently did not consider.

As far as I could tell he was originally struggling to convey a point about controlling a horse not being control if you use an implement to achieve it. In the context of other people's remarks, I presume that the car thing would work better if it was put in terms of riding a horse being a joint enterprise / partnership, and driving a car being a matter of man subjugating a machine to his will. Whether that is a strong point (or even what he was actually aiming for) I don't know because animal welfare suddenly became a secondary concern for some reason.

Analogies are often a bad move. People tend to use them to present a point that they are struggling to put in clear language. But if you can't put it into plain words then that usually indicates that you aren't clear on what the point is, so when you flail at random for analogous comparisons you are liable to choose unwisely. At that stage, a clear thinker will realise his problem, dump the bad analogy and replace it with the better point. The foggy minded will sadly cling to their bad analogies because they think tactically and sweat the little [LIFTED].

Erm, okay.

Mark

Don't engage the internet troll in conversation Mark, it erodes your soul.

Carole Ann Duffy's (she's the poet laureate, for those that don't recognize the name) ode to London 2012

A summer of rain, then a gap in the clouds
and The Queen jumped from the sky
to the cheering crowds.

We speak Shakespeare here,
a hundred tongues, one-voiced; the moon bronze or silver,
sun gold, from Cardiff to Edinburgh
by way of London Town,
on the Giant's Causeway;
we say we want to be who we truly are,
now, we roar it. Welcome to us.

We've had our pockets picked,
the soft, white hands of bankers,
bold as brass, filching our gold, our silver;
we want it back.

We are Mo Farah lifting the 10,000 metres gold.
We want new running-tracks in his name.
For Jessica Ennis, the same; for the Brownlee brothers,
Rutherford, Ohuruogu, Whitlock, Tweddle,
for every medal earned,
we want school playing-fields returned.

Enough of the soundbite abstract nouns,
austerity, policy, legacy, of tightening metaphorical belts;
we got on our real bikes,
for we are Bradley Wiggins,
side-burned, Mod, god;
we are Sir Chris Hoy,
Laura Trott, Victoria Pendleton, Kenny, Hindes,
Clancy, Burke, Kennaugh and Geraint Thomas,
Olympian names.
We want more cycle lanes.

Or we saddled our steed,
or we paddled our own canoe,
or we rowed in an eight or a four or a two;
our names, Glover and Stanning; Baillie and Stott;
Adlington, Ainslie, Wilson, Murray, Valegro (Dujardin's horse).

We saw what we did.
We are Nicola Adams and Jade Jones,
bring on the fighting kids.
We sense new weather.
We are on our marks.
We are all in this together.

Luke Campbell wins gold at Bantamweight in boxing. Tom Daley currently in bronze medal position in 10m diving with two rounds of diving left.

Tom Daley in first (but only just) with one dive left to go! Top three divers are all within one point of each other...

Bronze for Daley. Gold for the US and silver for China.

Yeah, well done Tom! Was willing him to get silver or gold but the competition was so, so, close in the end. Fantastic!

Could Tom Daley's trunks get any skimpier?

Yes.

Mark

His walk on music should be Right Said Fred.

Okay then. You can tell me what the point was. Go ahead.

There is a thread for this. It isn't this one. This is the "lets celebrate the Olympics" thread.

Please move elsewhere, frankly I'm bored of seeing endless circular conversations about whether or not people know what horses think.