Sunday, January 6, 2013

The power of vivid analogies...

A well-conceived analogy puts one's point across powerfully. It may even have a lasting legacy. Most people   will easily recall the opening lines of Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day's? Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."

I have a small collection of "analogy" clippings, like this one below, which illustrates the foolishness of putting an ordinary car (as opposed to NASA's purpose-built moon rovers) on the near-zero gravity moon:


 This next one too puts its point across vividly:


Here's a clever use of the poisonous, oppressive and crippling danger of letting poison ivy (figuratively) sprout all over:


You can even spin a fascinating fable around an analogy!...


Greek mythology comes in handy too...

   
Dogs have a special place in Chinese (adroit) use of colourful analogies...


Ditto for this one here...


And here's an interesting perspective, from the CNN site, on the life of Jesus when he lived on earth as a man. The use of analogy is reflected in its author's title, "My Take: Jesus was a dirty, dirty God":

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/05/my-take-jesus-was-a-dirty-dirty-god/
 
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To wrap up, I'll return to Sonnet 18. Here's a rendition by the Socratica Studios:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnMDj1K0gks
 

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