The Politics of Happiness

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One common measure of how clean a mountain stream is to look for trout. If you find the trout, the habitat is healthy. It's the same way with children in the city. Children are a kind of indicator. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.

All this pedestrian infrastructure shows respect for human dignity. We're telling people, "You are important -- not because you're rich or because you have a Ph.D., but because you are human." If people are treated as special, as sacred even, they behave that way. This creates a different kind of society.

-Penalosa's thoughts via Bicycle Diaries

So I'm cheating and I'm blogging about this right before I finish the last 30 pages. I actually didn't expect that much and that is when things tend to turn out better. (I guess that's the way I see things in general anyway.) So the whole biking thing is pretty minimal compared to David Byrne's opinionated rants with everything that he comes across in his travels. He has a fold up bike that he packs with him almost everywhere and does include a tips and what to wear guide at the end. What really pulled me towards this book is that he writes about the places that I have been i.e. London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Manila, San Francisco-duh, and New York. Even though his biking insights were nominal, I really began to appreciate his perspective about things... his anti corporate, advocacy, music and art spiel (does insanity really make a good artist).. he's more down to earth and had some legitimate insight. He also really knew his history about Manila and the Marcos' and martial law.

"Language is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control... What may have begun as an instrument of social and economic control has now been internalized by us as a mark of being civilized..." One of his ideas about why tribes in the Philippine had to begin to adopt a formal language.

It's good for a bit of personal philosophy (that at least I can say I agree with some of his pov) rather than a book about travels, biking, and music reference... It really is his stinking diary written for the masses. one thumb up.