Dutchman Johan Huibers has built an ark one-fifth the size of Noah’s, but similar in design, to sail or float through the Netherlands. “Johan’s Ark is calibrated to be able to pass narrowly under every bridge and through every sluice along his planned sailing route, through the interior waters of the Netherlands to the country’s big cities,” reports the AP.

Johan hopes his project will spark interesting in Christianity among the Dutch.

It appears no one or very few students are required to study Shakespeare in college. I thought several colleges followed the pattern of my alma mater in studying one of Shakespeare’s plays in Freshman Composition. I took The Merchant of Venice. (via Books, Inq.)

*Stand by for your Minneapolis weather report.*

Nice weather today. A little over seventy. But we could use some rain.

*This has been your Minneapolis weather report.*

I probably should have passed this story over to Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard. It’s his beat.

But I couldn’t resist linking to it here.

Thousands of people have been ‘fleeced’ into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.

Entire flocks of lambs were shipped over from the UK and Australia to Japan by an internet company and marketed as the latest ‘must have’ accessory.

We farm kids love that kind of story.

I found myself without a book to read last week, on the day of the week my usual used bookstore is closed. So I picked up a book that had been among my late Aunt Jean’s things, Beyond Recognition by Ridley Pearson. I’d taken it away from her house when we were closing it up after her death, not sure if I’d read it before. I find that I have read it; in fact I think Aunt Jean probably got this copy from me. But it was so long ago I’ve forgotten the main points.

I came to this passage today, and thought it worth sharing. Sgt. Boldt, the hero, is investigating a string of vicious arson killings. He drops in at a jazz club run by a friend, “Bear” Berenson, and starts talking with him, trying to unwind. They’re discussing how you see horrific crimes nowadays that you never saw in the past.

“I think it’s God,” Boldt said immediately, because he’d been thinking about this for a long time and Bear was the kind of friend he could say this to. “Or, more to the point, the lack thereof. I was raised with church. Sunday school, that sort of thing. You?”

Bear nodded. “Temple.”

Boldt continued, “Yeah, and in all those stories, all those lessons, you had good and evil, God and the Devil—no matter what significance you put in either—but they were there, and you had faith, some sense of faith, some belief in something larger than yourself, no matter how small or on what level. Maybe you look at the night sky a little differently or maybe you go to church twice a week, but it’s there, it’s in you. And without it, without that sense of God, there’s no flip side, there’s nothing to fear, and as much as I hate to say it, maybe fear is a good thing in this case. A sense of God—whatever you choose to call it—gives you a soul; without a soul, you’re left with unfocused eyes and sense that you’re at the top of the food chain and anything goes. And that’s what you see in a killer’s eyes: no humanity, no consciousness, no thought or concern for their fellowman. Some kid blows away his best friend over a pair of sneakers—so what? I’m telling you, it’s no act. They have no soul. I interrogate these guys, I look them right in the eye, and I’m telling you they’re beyond recognition. They aren’t human. I don’t know what they are.”

And on that happy note, I wish you a pleasant and psycho-free weekend.

Update: I should have given Aitchmark credit for tipping me off to the poodle story.

Did you know that people used to bathe their babies in water so dirty they couldn’t see through it? They might even loose their baby in the bathwater, and that’s where the phrase “Don’t throw out the baby . . .”

Or not. Read this list of stories supposedly explaining why we have certain phrases today. As far as I know, all of them are bogus.