Radio Days

Today has been a bust, one of those wading-through-treacle days where nothing turns out well -  background mood supplied by torrential rain.

I have taken refuge in the radio.

There was someone talking about Google self-driving cars and the thorny issue of ethical driving decisions: whether to swerve to avoid an animal, which animals are more swerveworthy than others  and what to do when faced with the choice of crashing into a bus or ploughing down pedestrians. 

There is apparently a surreal European initiative called the Sartre project, in which a convoy of self-drive cars follow a man driving a lorry.

If you're not in the UK, the piece is  written down here,  the radio show is here.

THINGS WE DON’T UNDERSTAND AND DEFINITELY ARE NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT

title of a performance by Miranda July

Also on the radio: news that Brokeback Mountain has become an opera, illustrated with a section where the men sing to each other in that operaticky mad-talking-in-funny-voices way.  The next time I need to say a difficult thing to someone I will definitely do it in the operatic style.


image from Algae Opera