I don't get much done on the mornings Spencer is in preschool since Ginger's given up her morning nap, but it is nice to be able to listen to adult radio. I don't mind Kidz Bop Christmas, and we're huge Laurie Berkner fans (I've even, uh, played her CDs in the car when the kids weren't with me), but I miss being able to hear NPR's talk shows. This morning I heard two interesting discussions; the first was about pets and the law, kicked off by a case in which a woman is suing her vet for malpractice. The details of the case weren't given, what they were talking about was how the law views pets as property, and so suing for suffering and loss of companionship, etc., isn't possible under current law. A vet/author was against it because he said that like human medical practice, costs would go up, etc. I can see both sides. I think we're a crazily litigious society already, but as someone who has in the past thrown birthday parties for her pets and who currently has four stockings for her cats in her living room, I know how what an important, irreplaceable role a pet can play in a person's life. One woman called in to say that she equated the loss of her pet with the loss of a family member, which really disturbed the vet, who said he could never say that losing his dog would be the same as losing his daughter. But I think that to people who may not have a spouse or children, especially, pets are truly their family. Interesting stuff.
The other was a discussion with the author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. I didn't get to listen to the whole thing, but I wish I could have, it was so very interesting. He talked about how there are many literal errors in the Bible because of the way in which it was handed down by scribes---each one wrote down the text in the way in which he interpreted it, adding to or taking things from it according to their own personal beliefs and politics. He discussed unintentional errors made by the miscopying of words (removing a single letter could change the entire meaning of a word), as well as current-day misinterpretation of the text. The one example he gave was the homosexuality issue; apparently, back in Biblical days, homosexuality wasn't condemned because of the actual act of two men having sex, but because they believed that in order for two men to have sex, one had to take the role of a woman and be submissive, and it was considered wrong for a man to be dominated. When two men were discovered to have a homosexual relationship, only one man (the man who was submissive) was punished. Thought-provoking stuff. Coincidentally, I just saw this book at the library on the new book shelf. Stuff like this makes me want to go back to school.