The Barnum principle

Johan Huibers, the owner of a construction company in the Netherlands, is way ahead of Ken Ham. He has actually begun construction of a replica of Noah's Ark, and his even floats—although he accomplishes that by cheating, building his ark as a wooden superstructure on top of an array of bolted-together steel barges.

The revealing factoid about this crank, though, is this:

Actually, this ark is not the first that Mr. Huibers has built. He first began dreaming of an ark in 1992, shortly after a heavy storm lashed the coastal region north of Amsterdam where he lives. His wife, Bianca, a police officer, opposed the idea.

"She said no, but by 2004 I had built a smaller ark, 225 feet long, to sail through the Dutch canals," he said. It became a minor sensation. He charged adult visitors $7 to board it.

"More than 600,000 people came, in about three years," he said. He said he made about $3.5 million, enough to clear a profit of $1.2 million.

Crazy pays, and there is a sucker born every minute.