I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!

Here's the scene. Angry child goes to bedroom, slams door, and secretly rants: "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!" Doesn't solve the issue with mommy and daddy, but it does relieve the rage.

Short leap from that scenario to today's BP scenario. Today we have a parade of I-can't-quite-read-the-questions-my-aide-wrote Congressmen, plus a barrage of blistering editorials, plus cable pundits ripping the president's performance in the Oval Office [accent on "performance" as if this were Oscar Night], all capped off by the network news snapping shots of Tony Hayward sailing, while eager reporters juxtapose closeup shots of hurting Gulf survivors.

Feel good and angry now...?

Three-year-olds might, but voters shouldn't. This catastrophe is far too troubling to be relieved by shoot-from- the-hip hysterics. Humanity is being reminded once again that it has a magnificent tiger by the tail. It's called technology. It made America what it became in the 20th C, and now it has swept us to dizzying new heights from which we either leap blindly or pause to ask a few more of the unasked questions.

All establishments (military, medical, energy, computer) begin with "If I can dream it, I can do it." Few, in this age of racing-to-be-first, pause very long over "If I do do it, does this serve the general welfare as well as the stockholders?"

In the eager hands of science itches keys that promise to unlock cosmic secrets. About our universe, our planet, our resources, and oh by the way our very human existence. Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein would have paid for the privilege. Would it be too much to presume they would have occasionally interrupted the stockholders' annual meeting with that question...?

And would it be too easy to suspect they would have usually been shouted down...?