The heros that rescued those kids came up with a preposterous and unreasonable plan. We could have ignored them, too. And ignored the drilling crews, and the dudes with miles of hose and giant pumps. We could have said that any rescue would require an unreasonable effort.

It sure is easy to slip "we" all over that paragraph. I certainly don't deserve any credit for the decisions that were made and the heroics that saved the day.

But if we reject all the unreasonable efforts, we are left with the status quo. That would mean those kids wouldn't have even been located, let alone rescued. Thank goodness for people who flew around the world to do crazy things. Thank goodness for divers who ditched their wives on their anniversary and flew over there just on the chance they might carry the bottles for the Navy experts. Those are not reasonable actions.

Unreasonable people aren't always right. Maybe they're not even usually right. Maybe. But thank goodness for the times when progress depended on them and they didn't fail us by being reasonable.