From Harper’s Weekly Review:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to punish to make people behave better,\u201d said the mayor of B\u00e9ziers, France, where a database containing the genetic information of dogs will be created so that excrement left on the street can be identified and the owners fined.<\/em><\/p>\n Personal memory: this policy is an advance on the situation I encountered in Paris in the 1980’s, where dog shit wasn’t picked up by the dog’s person but left in the gutters to stink until these cute little sweeper-scooters came along at some point to clean things up.<\/p>\n So one of the very first French words I learned to apply was “Attention!” Which was cried out, full accent included, when one of my feet was heading off the sidewalk and down into the street…upon a large pile of dog shit.<\/p>\n How long did it take me to clean the treads of my sneakers? Je ne sais pas. Un longtemps.<\/p>\n Oh enough of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Harper’s Weekly Review: \u201cWe have to punish to make people behave better,\u201d said the mayor of B\u00e9ziers, France, where a database containing the genetic information of dogs will be created so that excrement left on the street can be … Continue reading