Our Silly Distraction for the Day

Clean Swimming

For 50 years, raw sewage has been released into the Seine River. Now the Mayor of Paris is swimming in it. From Wired:

Swimming in the Seine has been banned for the past century, and a river clean enough for a political photo op has long been an ambition among French lawmakers.

Apparently, this swimming stunt is just a sideshow. The real purpose was to justify spending over a billion Euro to clean up that river Seine, which has been deemed too unhealthy to swim in for a century.

We could only wish for the same showmanship from our own politicians. Maybe the Presidency should be a trial by sport?

At any rate, the cleanup promises to revive the population of the famed Parisian catfish. So there’s that.