This is Mill Ends Park. It's not always this sparse.

But we thought it could use a little livening up.

We brought a pig, a giraffe, a butterfly and a dragon. They're holding congress around a tuft of moss, from which the butterfly pontificates.

And then Slutty Duck stopped in for a visit.

Q. You say you are happy but what constitutes your happiness?

A. Broadly, a sense of contentment with where I am and what I'm doing. Specifically, a sense of security, a sense of having what I want and living where I want and doing what I want, a sense of feeling that I'm growing and progressing and working on achieving my goals and working for the good. A few good friends. And the occasional drunken orgy. What constitutes yours?

Okay. Occam's Razor is a cool tool. Essentially, it allows you to cut through layers of bullshit to the core of an issue. Essentially, it carves off unnecessary externalities and posits that the simplest sufficient solution to a given problem is the best and also probably the closest to the truth.

This morning I'm thinking about Occam's Razor and health care because the House passed their health care reform bill late last night. Their version of reform involves many new layers of complexity—not to mention tax—to a problem that seems to have a simple solution.

I haven't had health insurance in over two years. Totally eep!, right? Except, like, not really. I'm young and healthy. I take care of myself. If I was hit by a car, yes, that would suck. Like, mad type suck. But when you walk the rope without a net you focus on your balance. I could afford health insurance but I've been choosing not to. And if you value personal liberty, even if you disagree with my choice, you value my ability to have that choice.

My employer offers a health plan but I haven't taken it, mostly because employer-sponsored health care seemed like a bad idea, even though at the time I didn't consider why. But now I am and I still think it's a bad idea. Especially if you work for a small company or if you want to consider yourself in any sense mobile. Employer-sponsored health care ties you to that employer. And costs are all out of whack. Costs are rising and my company's coverage policy is changing. Mostly out of curiosity I compared my employer's cost for covering me to my own cost for a private plan with Kaiser Permanente. I would pay something like three times less for a pretty great private plan than my employer pays for what seems like a pretty paltry group plan.

Relating this to Occam's Razor, employer-sponsored health care is a bad idea because it layers on the bullshit. It ties you to your employer, thereby limiting your freedom and mobility, and it costs you (if you are like me) more than a private plan. A plan with Kaiser Permanente would allow me to switch employers as often as I want and would also remove all intermediaries between me and the people I would pay to fix me if I break. And because my boss didn't have to pay unnecessarily high costs to provide my health coverage, he could in theory pay me more. It's a win for everybody. It's the simplest and the best solution.

The House's health care bill is the opposite.

The fact is that the health care market is already heavily regulated. It is not a free market. We as consumers of health insurance are not benefitting from the effects of competition because there is no real competition because the market is not open. And now the government wants to reduce competition even more. In effect, they want to eliminate competition. They want to mandate a monopoly. And they want to eliminate personal liberty:

"H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax."

And:

"Section 7203—misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year."

If this law were already in effect, I would have been fined and potentially arrested when I quit my last job because I wanted to freelance and travel. I was poor, I slept on floors, I ate nothing but rice and beans for weeks, and I had never before been more in love with life. If this law were already in effect, I wouldn't have been able to quit the job I hated. I wouldn't have been able to commit a summer to writing code and traveling to France. I wouldn't have been able to explore the United States by bus and decide which city I loved the best and then move there with nothing but the last of my savings and a laptop and the determination to make my life there. My life would be completely different. For the worse. This law would have stripped me of my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Pretty cool, right?

The health care industry absolutely needs reform but the government is the wrong agent to carry out that reform. The simplest and smartest solution to the problem would be to remove the restrictions on the market, to make it really free and to allow us to benefit from the effects of real competition. The market for health insurance should look more like the market for car insurance, not more like the government.

The problem with the term "livable" as people concerned with habitation and transportation currently apply it to their concerns is that it makes them seem like pampered pussies.

How do they use it? What, to them, distinguishes a "livable" community from what we immediately assume should be termed an "unlivable" community? Basically, a "livable community" is one that is dense enough to make walking or bicycling the most convenient, i.e. the most appealing, option for most of our daily trips, be it to a grocery store or cafe or library or park. And for the trips that are not most conveniently made by foot alone or by foot on pedal, then one should have options, be it bus, car, streetcar, subway. A "livable" community is essentially one that allows its residents to lead a car-light to car-free life, and that provides them a variety of amenities that are nearby and conveniently accessible.

These people might salt their talk with other jive terms like "sustainable" or "smart growth" or "complete streets" but that's all dazzle-speak. Regardless of how they suss it up, the core of their concern is density.

The most "sustainable" communities we know are our densest cities. The areas of not only our smartest but also our most artful growth are our densest cities. The most lively and varied and "complete" streets that we'll ever walk or pedal or drive down or rail over or beneath or on are those of our densest cities.

But while cities may be the liveliest and (arguably) most desirable places to live, they are not at all the only places to live. We're a tough bunch. We live in sunny deserts, in snowy tundras, in forests, in plains, in mountains and valleys, on teardrop islands where some of us worship the detritus of others of us. And because we're living in all of these myriad places, all of these myriad places are by definition "livable".

"Livable" means "fit to live in". That's it. But a "livable community" implies a certain level of comfort and convenience. It implies the level of comfort and convenience that people who live in cities should expect in return for their higher rents. To paraphrase one planner's presentation that I recently heard: the higher housing price of walkable neighborhoods reflects the value people place on areas of mixed use.

So a "livable community", as people concerned with habitation and transportation currently mean it, is basically (1) built on a human, aka walkable, scale, (2) offers and accommodates multiple transportation options, (3) more densely populated than areas of predominately detached, single-family houses, aka sprawl.

Sprawl was built on an inhuman scale, specifically that of the automobile. Some cities were, too, and that's unfortunate but our best were not. Our best cities were built to accommodate humans in all our varied ways. And this is why, rather than calling these communities "livable", we should instead be calling them "humane".

Ezekiel Buchheit sent me this link to a piece of sidewalk graffiti in San Francisco.

I don't mean to tickle my own piccolo or anything but I want the record to record that I used that graffiti way before it was published on The Chive. Not that exact piece, no, but one in the same series.

It was Ezekiel Buchheit, by the way, whose idea is was make that book. Let the record record that, too.

A.
10:13
So check it out. In the bathroom at this restaurant in Indiana there was a bathtub. Because the restaurant was in a house.
10:14
And this bathtub was converted into a big fish tank. A couple gigantic goldfish swam in it. I went in there a couple times to pee. I was drunk. And I started grabbing at the fish.

B.
10:14
Aww. Poor fish. You tainted them.

A.
10:16
Finally I grabbed one. I lifted it out of the water, it made kissy faces at me, I kissed it back, then let it go.

B.
10:16
That's so cute. And then it died.
10:17
It wasn't kissing at you, idiot. It was dying.

A.
10:18
Nah. It loved the attention.

B.
10:18
Are you joking me?

A.
10:19
No, it really did. It made kissy face to me. That's the universal sign of love.

B.
10:20
Haha. It's really sad that's all you can get. You've resorted to kissing fish.
10:22
Sorry but you won't find love there.
10:27
Uh oh, looks like I hit a soft spot. No response.

A.
10:29
Sorry, I was in the bathroom. Reminiscing fondly on my fish.

B.
10:29
Ewwww.

On Your Own Again. In which our hero finds himself alone and feeling strange on the far side of some major change.

Shutout. In which our hero attempts to close it off and start it over.

We Came Through. In which our hero feels confident that he's made it.

Wait Until Dark. In which our hero escapes the disappointment of the day into thoughts of the dark.

Mathilde. In which our hero's former lover, in one form or another, returns to him.

The World's Strongest Man. In which our hero recognizes a fatal limitation.

Duchess. In which our hero recognizes the place of his lover in his life and of his in theirs.

Darkness. In which our hero finds himself in the darkness and wonders where to go.

Jackie. In which our hero reminisces fondly on his past while considering his future.

The Girls From The Streets. In which our hero forsakes his future for tonight.

The Lady Came From Baltimore. In which our hero's fatal flaw changes his plans yet again.

Best Of Both Worlds. In which our hero struggles under a cruel ultimatum: it's one or the other, not both.

The Electrician. In which our hero slows down to check the discrepancy between where he is and where he wants to be.

30 Century Man. In which our hero decides he wants neither of the options presented but a third in suspension.

Rosary. In which our hero sees what needs to change and also his future, strung out like beads.

We Could Be Flying. In which our hero's attitude toward his future hits a high point.

Thanks For Chicago, Mr James. In which our hero says so long and thanks for all the memories.

Lights Of Cincinatti. In which our hero recalls what it's like returning home and also what it's like heading out alone.

Rhymes Of Goodbye. In which our hero reconciles with what he wanted, what he got, what he learned and where he's headed.

If She Walked Into My Life. In which our hero reconsiders the lover he thinks he wants to leave.

Blanket Roll Blues. In which our hero makes his move.

How can you be so hopeless and yet such a fool for hope?

Buddha was wrong. It isn't our desire that makes us unhappy, but the dissonance between our desire and our reality.

Mill Ends Park is actually a leprechaun colony, rokay? Not a gnome camp. Gnome, go home.