Off-shore oil driller and acclaimed scientist and inventor James Cameron, who “has worked extensively with robot submarines,” is annoyed that the film directors running BP have not used his know-how to plug the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Reverse that; Cameron is the filmer; BP the explorer. But you get how ridiculous Cameron’s puff is; how inflated Hollywood’s sense of itself is.

What matters is that the public get an idea of how crucial to life itself are the hard sciences, although a whole lot will have to change before the youth, streaming into law, health care and finance for the obvious reason (it begins with a “g”) change course, and those with the aptitude do hard science.

UPDATE (June 4): The images of immobilized pelicans weighed down by oil are heartbreaking. In the animal rescue and clean-up efforts we ought to begin to see the strength of private initiative.

The political Idiocracy continues to make hay of this environmental nightmare. Insisting Big Daddy O was supposed to clean up, show more rage, froth at the mouth more.

The fact that the POTUS and the FLOTUS like to live it up is perhpas unseemly. But the idea that if Obama were not so self-absorbed, or more unhinged emotionally, he’d do what’s right to save our ravaged coast—this is misguided.

This is so sad. (Here are my birdies.)

In “Regulation Encourages Recklessness” I spoke to what I think is at the root of environmental despoliation:

• Regulations, which are the culmination of agreements between the regulated and the regulators, to the detriment of those left out the loop: wild life and the rest of us.

• The tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights: “Government-controlled resources go to seed because there is no private ownership of the means of production. Entrusted with the management of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, don’t care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement except to whine like wimps—how long before your performance plummets?”

• The modern corporate colossus resembles government in many ways.

My smart readers can think over the last point—have at it. I’ll be back to mark your pixelated papers.