Let's not argue semantics

Bloomberg has spent the last several hours airing live feeds of Tony Hayward's testimony to the congressional panel investigating BP, and as a teacher who sometimes works on cultural sensitivity course materials I want to smack him in the face. He keeps repeating "the blowout preventer is a failsafe" when congress tells him it has failed. Tony, you idiot. What you mean when you say failsafe is not what they hear, and while you might be technically correct that the blowout preventer's role in an engineering context is as a failsafe mechanism, that is not a clever dodge when an angry group of non-engineers talks to you about failure rates. It does not elucidate.

In conclusion, I might have had some sympathy at some point, but now I want you to die. I'm not normally a law and order type, but I would absolutely go criminal penalty and death sentence on this one, just because you're an asshole. Maybe I could burn you on a stake stuck into piles of money. I'm just thinking.