In his book "Thing Explainer," Randall Monroe endeavors to describe and explain the inner workings of complex stuff using line drawings and a vocabulary of the 1000 most common words. As the creator of the web comic "xkcd" and a guy with a BS in Physics, his qualifications and sensibility make him the obvious heir to the work of David Macaulay, whose "The Way Things Work" did the same thing 30 years ago. Using just "ten hundred" words, Monroe reduces things to their most basic elements, starting with the table of contents ("Things in the Book by Page") thru the forward ("Page Before the Book Starts") and on to things like elevators ("Lifting Rooms") and dishwashers ("Box That Cleans Food Holders").
Monroe came to mind because of an article about China's development of a rail hub in Eastern Europe. As part of its "One Belt, One Road" program to extend its reach for trade, that country has been buying seaports around the world to increase its footprint. But in this case there is no water anywhere even close to the tracks. Indeed, the hub in Khorgos, Kazakhstan is about as far from the sea as you can get. And – here's where Monroe's expertise at simplification might have been helpful – that particular point has an actual name: the Pole of Inaccessibility.
Not a babka baker named Wojciech who lives in Krakow and doesn't like to talk to anyone, there are actually eight Poles of Inaccessibility in the world, one on each land mass as well as in the Pacific Ocean. In practice they are generally the most remote places you can be: in the outback in Australia, or in North Dakota in the US to name two. In geographical terms, they are often defined as the furthest location from the coastlines of a continent. In short, if you want to get any from it all, these may actually be the spots.
But in a 140-character world, that moniker is a bit much. It echoes the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) of German linguistic inventions. That language is well known for combining simple words into complex ones that result in a new construct. For example, in English we might describe a guy as the captain of a steamship that plies the Danube. But in the Fatherland that has a very specific word of its own: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän. I'll leave it to speakers of that mother tongue to puzzle out the feminine version.
That's not to say that on these shores there aren't examples where we have slang standing in for official terms. Certain fields have highly technical descriptions that we mere mortals have reduced to their essence. A doctor might tell you to drink water if you have synchronous diaphragmatic flutter, which is the medical description for the hiccups. Likewise, if your physician tells you that that pain in your head is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, you might be think you were going to die. Not to worry: that's the correct term for an ice cream headache.
The corollary are those compact words or phrases that describe complex actions. You see these perhaps most notably in sports. In baseball if a pitcher aborts his throw after he's started it, we call that a balk. In football, a long throw down the field with little chance of success is a Hail Mary. In tennis, lose a set without winning a game and you've been bageled. And in cricket, if a bowler who would normally spin the ball toward a right-handed batsman spins it away from him, that's a doosra. Reverse it, and it's a googly.
But back to our geography lesson. There's nothing in the phrase in question that's meant to be ironic or flip. (That stands in contrast to Colin Bateman's book about a hard-drinking bicycle-riding journalist in Northern Ireland, titled after the vehicle that gets him from fight to fight: "Cycle of Violence.") Still, while Pole of Inaccessibility may be technically correct, it's a mouthful that takes mental time to decode. So perhaps going forward, it might be worth taking a page from Randall Monroe's book, and strip it down to its simplest components. In that light, might I suggest "most far away-est place" as a substitute. And that way when you mention the Pole of Inaccessibility, you WILL be talking about that babka baker in Krakow named Wojciech.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford is fascinated by words and phrases. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Monroe came to mind because of an article about China's development of a rail hub in Eastern Europe. As part of its "One Belt, One Road" program to extend its reach for trade, that country has been buying seaports around the world to increase its footprint. But in this case there is no water anywhere even close to the tracks. Indeed, the hub in Khorgos, Kazakhstan is about as far from the sea as you can get. And – here's where Monroe's expertise at simplification might have been helpful – that particular point has an actual name: the Pole of Inaccessibility.
Not a babka baker named Wojciech who lives in Krakow and doesn't like to talk to anyone, there are actually eight Poles of Inaccessibility in the world, one on each land mass as well as in the Pacific Ocean. In practice they are generally the most remote places you can be: in the outback in Australia, or in North Dakota in the US to name two. In geographical terms, they are often defined as the furthest location from the coastlines of a continent. In short, if you want to get any from it all, these may actually be the spots.
But in a 140-character world, that moniker is a bit much. It echoes the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) of German linguistic inventions. That language is well known for combining simple words into complex ones that result in a new construct. For example, in English we might describe a guy as the captain of a steamship that plies the Danube. But in the Fatherland that has a very specific word of its own: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän. I'll leave it to speakers of that mother tongue to puzzle out the feminine version.
That's not to say that on these shores there aren't examples where we have slang standing in for official terms. Certain fields have highly technical descriptions that we mere mortals have reduced to their essence. A doctor might tell you to drink water if you have synchronous diaphragmatic flutter, which is the medical description for the hiccups. Likewise, if your physician tells you that that pain in your head is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, you might be think you were going to die. Not to worry: that's the correct term for an ice cream headache.
The corollary are those compact words or phrases that describe complex actions. You see these perhaps most notably in sports. In baseball if a pitcher aborts his throw after he's started it, we call that a balk. In football, a long throw down the field with little chance of success is a Hail Mary. In tennis, lose a set without winning a game and you've been bageled. And in cricket, if a bowler who would normally spin the ball toward a right-handed batsman spins it away from him, that's a doosra. Reverse it, and it's a googly.
But back to our geography lesson. There's nothing in the phrase in question that's meant to be ironic or flip. (That stands in contrast to Colin Bateman's book about a hard-drinking bicycle-riding journalist in Northern Ireland, titled after the vehicle that gets him from fight to fight: "Cycle of Violence.") Still, while Pole of Inaccessibility may be technically correct, it's a mouthful that takes mental time to decode. So perhaps going forward, it might be worth taking a page from Randall Monroe's book, and strip it down to its simplest components. In that light, might I suggest "most far away-est place" as a substitute. And that way when you mention the Pole of Inaccessibility, you WILL be talking about that babka baker in Krakow named Wojciech.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is fascinated by words and phrases. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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