Exhausted by local loops, unbundled bitstreams and naked DSL, we've not even tried to make sense of the net neutrality debate going on in the US. But even dumb old Dumb Terminal seems to understand the issues a little better than US Senator Ted Stevens.

Here is Senator Stevens' explanation of how the internet works, and why he therefore voted against the net neutrality provisions:

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially...

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material."

There's more from him here, and full audio here.

As our delightful source Boing Boing says, "it's like hearing a caveman expound on the future of silver-birds-from-sky and why we need to keep them from flying so high they anger the gods".

(How the internet really works. NB: Not a series of tubes.)