Easter Miscellany

As seems to be happening to a few bloggers lately, P O'Neill has some work commitments that will cut into blogging over the next week or so. But we're hopeful that either there can be some opportunistic blogging by us over that week, or that blogging partner R Morgenstern may re-enter the fray from her recent lull. So don't stop coming back.

We'll leave you with a few comments having read John DeLorean's obituary in Saturday's Irish Times (subs. req'd). One is left with the impression that DeLorean was a man before his time -- ensnaring Arthur Andersen (RIP) in accounting scandals before it was cool, and a strategic embrace of Christianity before the current occupant of the White House did:

A typical DeLorean touch was his conversion to fundamentalist Christianity in 1982 when he experienced the full-immersion baptism - in his exquisitely tiled swimming pool. He also changed the name of a semi-secret $9 million company he owned in Utah from Logan Manufacturing to "Ecclesiastes 9: 10-11-12", a switch that added to the delay before hundreds of creditors in Britain, America and France (from where he got the Renault engine for his car) could claim it.

Most of the money regained actually came via court cases against the international accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, which was sued by the British government for failing to spot fraudulence in the DeLorean Motor Company.

Incidentally, those passages from Ecclesiastes show that for DeLorean, unlike Dubya, religion required a little humility:

10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

He wisely, given his circumstances, left out the previous line about staying with your wife for life. With the US at risk of celebrating a very theocratic Easter, no harm in a nod to someone who took his religion with a wink.