Showing posts with label Chess Analogies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chess Analogies. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Not all chess analogies work well

I'm not really sure what the connection to chess is in this one:
...here in Ontario, buying gas is like a game of chess. At-the-pump prices go up and down like yo-yos, with ten cent per liter (think thirty cents per gallon) daily swings a common occurrence. So when gas is running about eighty-one cents per liter (USD$2.60/gal.), and you see it drop to seventy-four cents, you pull in and fill up. It doesn't matter if the tank is full, and it's all you can do to squeeze three bucks worth in.
Maybe they play chess differently in Canada?

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Is chess the ultimate metaphor?

I posted awhile back on the use of the term "chess piece" to describe Ukraine's current geopolitical status. But there seems to be no end to the metaphorical use of chess in describing politics, war, life, in fact - just about anything. Particularly popular is the use of "pawn(s)" to describe a person or group who is unaware, controlled, being duped, left out of the loop, etc.

Here is a typical example from Froggy Ruminations' post "Usama bin Laden is NOT Dead":
....But at some point, muslims are going to have to realize that they are acting as pawns in a global chess game being played by a handful of despotic psychopaths who are all too willing to sacrifice them in what will clearly be a losing effort.
Here is another example, on the topic of Marxism by Diplomad:
It's a call to keep certain people as either an ethnic curio on the shelf for the enjoyment of European and North American anthropologists or, equally vile, as exploitable pawns for the use of political activists.
And in a post entitled "Rumsfeld's Gambit", the So-Called Austin Mayor states:
It seems the wing-nuts were wrong to consider Spc. Wilson a pawn of the liberal media. He's actually a pawn of the Bush administration -- just like all the other troops in Iraq.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Using chess for geo-political analogies

It is interesting how often writers refer to chess in describing the great political events of the day. On the current political turmoil in Ukraine:
The chess piece that Russia desires for its new great game

Ukraine has been a chess piece in a strategic game played out by stronger regional forces since it was first mentioned in the fourth century BC.
Read the rest of this article.