Ace reporter Kathleen Knight, aware that Inquiring Minds Want to Know, travels the Earth looking for answers to difficult questions, enigmas large and small, messy riddles long unsolved, and she finds them. More difficult, of course, is discerning the secret questions people hesitate to ask for fear of ridicule or being reported to the Thought Police. Since you were afraid to inquire, we’ll answer them anyway.
Answers To Questions You Never Asked
1. Where, exactly, is the middle of nowhere?
Ask a farm boy, an irritable ascetic or someone from Wyoming where they live and they will promptly tell you “In the middle of nowhere.” Obviously, they are exaggerating, overstating their rustic digs, boasting about their extreme isolation. As we all know, there is a Dollar Store within five miles of everywhere, so how remote can you be? Well…plenty, it turns out. And now, finally, some scientists with nothing better to do have figured out precisely where the middle of nowhere is.
Point Nemo is the most remote location on Earth, so far removed from civilization that the closest humans to there at any given time are likely to be astronauts. In fact, that’s precisely why NASA and other global space agencies have designated Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean as their underwater space graveyard for falling debris. In 2031, when the International Space Station comes tumbling down, it will do so at the Point, as far away from humans as geographically possible.
Pointe Nemo is officially known as “the ocean pole of inaccessibility,” or the point in the ocean farthest from land. Located at 48 degrees, 52.6’S and 123 degrees 23.6’W, the spot is quite literally the middle of nowhere, surrounded by 1000 miles of ocean in every direction. The closest landmasses to the place are one of the Pitcairn Islands to the north, one of the Easter Islands to the northeast and an island off the coast of Antarctica to the south. There are no human inhabitants anywhere near Point Nemo. Scientists chose to call the location “Nemo” because it is Latin for “no one” and as a reference to Jules Verne’s submarine captain from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
Not even the man who first calculated the precise location of Point Nemo has visited. In 1992, Croation survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela set out to find the exact point in the Pacific that was farthest away from any land using an esoteric computer program. Ever thought about seeing your creation, Hrvoje? “I thought about it once,” he smiled, “but my wife talked me into going to the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, instead.”
2. Do Chickens Really Have A Church Of Their Own? I Have Seen Photos.
No, chickens profess no religion (although they are a sacred animal themselves in many cultures, including Sheltonism), despite being deeply embedded in belief systems and religious worship practices. In Greek mythology, Alectryon was the guard of Ares, waiting beside his door to alert him if anyone came close while he was sleeping. In Ancient Greece, chickens were not used for sacrifices because they were considered exotic animals. The Greeks believed that even lions were afraid of roosters.
However, there IS an abandoned church called Bukit Rhema located in the Magelang area of Central Java, Indonesia that absolutely resembles a chicken. The building was erected during the 1890s by Daniel Alamsjah, who claimed to have been inspired by God to build a prayer house in a dream he had. Now called Gareja Ayam (Indonesian for “chicken church”), construction was never completed and the place was left to deteriorate. Despite all this, the odd building has become a tourist attraction and a movie setting. If you go, Gareja Ayam has a cute little restaurant in the chicken’s rear. Incredibly, no eggs are served.
3. How Much Fun Was It To Have A Harem?
Perhaps not so much as you think. One man’s harem might be another man’s dog pound, at least in terms of then and now. Women’s beauty standards constantly change, just like our taste in fashion, music or dildos. For a while, one thing is in vogue, then another, like bellbottoms and skinny jeans or Lawrence Welk and Snoop Dogg. In Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, they sing songs extolling the beauty of a woman’s thick black eyebrows. Back in the day, when Iran was called Persia, women with light mustaches were considered the bees’ knees. Persian poets, whose words shaped the cultural landscape, compared a woman’s stache to a shadow on the moon, a subtle enhancement that amplified its radiance. (“Her lip adorned with a shadow’s trace, Holds a sweetness time cannot erase.”) Somebody call Burma-Shave.
In the opulent courts of Qajar, Nasir al-Din Shah reigned as both a monarch and a connoisseur of beauty. The big guy had 84 women in his harem, none of them allowed to shave their mustaches, all of them required to gain weight. Today, none of them would meet the minimal standards for consideration in the Miss Pflugerville contest. Think date night at MIT or Carnegie Mellon. Back then, these beauties were on the tool company calendars while the lean baldfaced lovelies of today were selling pencils in front of the Apadana Walmart. Jeeves, take me to the nearest Time Machine, my proclivities are boiling over.
4. I Am Chronically Indecisive. Is There A Restaurant Somewhere That Will Tell Me What I Want For Dinner?
Of course! That would be Tokyo’s unparalleled Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, where every server has dementia. Feel free to order anything on the menu, your order will go astray and be replaced by something delicious and one of a kind. The restaurant exists to challenge perception and celebrate ability. What a concept!
The idea belongs to Shiro Oguni, a television director who visited a group home for people with dementia and noticed something shift when he was served the wrong dish. His hamburger order turned into gyoza, but he didn’t protest. Instead, he realized that society’s view of dementia limited what people believe those living with it can do.
Around the table, everyone ate with such pleasure that for a moment he wondered if he was the one who’d become confused. Clarity came not with the impulse to correct the mistake, but with a question: what if the mistake isn’t a problem? What if my need for someone to get it right is? Shiro took a bite of the gyoza, and it was really good. Suddenly, the order being incorrect didn’t matter very much. “Why raise our eyebrows at the difference between sizzling steak and gyoza?” he laughed.
The experience stayed with Oguni for days and he found himself wondering “if one wrong order could cause such a reaction in me, what would happen if someone built an entire restaurant around that feeling?” He decided to find out. Shiro opened RANDY, a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo’s Roppongi district.
Rather then hide errors, the restaurant makes them visible. At one event, 37% of the orders were mistaken but 99% of the customers claimed they were happy anyway. Servers wear color-coded aprons, and order sheets make use of simple visuals, supporting memory and ease. One waiter, 85 years old, forgot his clipboard but still greeted guests, delivered dessert and laughed along with customers when things went sideways. Behind every order is extraordinary planning. Support staff are positioned everywhere, ready to step in without taking over. The restaurant exists to help people with dementia succeed, even when success produces results that look nothing like traditional service.
You go in, sit at a small pop-up table. Servers with dementia lead you to your seat. You order coffee or cake. Perhaps your coffee comes with a straw or your cake arrives elsewhere. Mistakes are baked into the experience. Maybe an older woman shows you to your table, then sits down with you like you’re old friends. Another server wrestles with the pepper mill, concentrating hard but not entirely sure where the pepper will land. Maybe you reach over to help. Other diners join in. Then someone shouts “We did it!” when the problem is solved. Everyone laughs with the shared absurdity of how much effort a simple act can take. Instead of frustration, the vulnerability opens space for connection. One guest described seeing a server smile after a “thank you” and said it reminded her of her grandfather’s last months.
“I’m still capable,” a waiter might say after his shift. “This has given me confidence.” The servers are not looking for pity, they’re grateful for honest work. They want to contribute and feel useful to their community, but society keeps telling them no. Ah, but The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders tells them yes! and they finally have a place in the sun.
5. Does “The One” Exist?
No, so stop it.
But The Right One definitely exists, if only we can recognize him or her when we run across them. Being obsessed with finding physical perfection won’t help. There isn’t just one perfect person for you somewhere in the world, there’s a raft of them. That might be one of them over there in the next row at the ballgame or playing guitar up there on the stage at a folk festival. Some people have great instincts. Aimee, a young nurse not particularly in the market for a love interest at the time, saw Tom with the Stetson singing a song one day at a club, jumped up and ran right up to the stage, yelling “Clear the aisles, I’ll be taking that cowboy right there!” Almost 50 years later, they’re still together and the temperature at their place is still high.
Not everyone, alas, is as adept as Aimee. And even when you get a great notion, it has to be reciprocated by the pursuee. Fortunately for her, Tom was putty in her hands. Your first choice might laugh or give you the stinkeye. At Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, I asked my lovely lab partner Betty Jane Kendrick out on a date. She looked at me with incredulity. “But you’re a YANKEE!” she gasped. I tried telling her no, I’m a Red Sox, but that didn’t help. “Strike three!” the umpire said.
Dr. John Gottman, with 50 years of research and thousands of couples studied under his belt says “True connection doesn’t always feel like fireworks. Often, it feels like coming home. You know you’ve found someone special when being together feels as natural as breathing. When you can sit in comfortable silence. When your partner’s presence soothes your nervous system rather than activating it. This deep comfort isn’t about settling or lacking passion. It’s about being able to navigate life as a team and having mutual commitment to your relationship and each other’s wellbeing. Our research clearly shows that couples with lower baseline stress hormones when together have significantly higher relationship satisfaction and longevity.” Who’s going to argue with comfy stress hormones?
And stop being a baby when you don’t get your way. Smart couples don’t break up—or threaten to—over minor disagreements. Gottman says a surprising 69% of relationship problems are perpetual. This means that successful couples learn to navigate these issues even while disagreeing. “Learning to communicate through conflict productively is a cornerstone of a healthy relationship.” he avers.
There are, of course, limits to disagreement. “You do have to align on things that matter most,” says Dr. G. “When you’ve found the right person, your fundamental views about family, career, spirituality and life priorities will complement each other in meaningful ways. This alignment becomes particularly clear when you discuss the future. You both want similar things, whether that’s children, career ambitions, lifestyle choices, a ferret or how you want to spend your so-called golden years. There’s a natural flow to these conversations rather than constant negotiation or compromise that leaves one person feeling unheard.”
Hollywood has tried to sell us The Beautiful Lie, that we’ll know instantly when we’ve found “The One.” But they also tried to make Forrest Gump viable and convince us that when we are possessed by the devil, our heads can twirl completely around. Not so. That only happens when Dolly Parton is walking by.
That’s all, folks….
