Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars has an excerpt from an article in Christianity Today by Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter, a well-known black Christian conservative who authored the book Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby. In the article, Carter is arguing against the common demonization of the ACLU by Christians, pointing out that while he disagrees with the ACLU on the establishment clause, they are also a big defender of the free exercise clause and have consistently supported Christians in free exercise court cases: More to the point, the ACLU is often right about the First Amendment’s free exercise clause, taking on fights that others refuse. It might surprise some critics that the ACLU defends the free speech and free exercise rights of, well, Christians.The larger point of the article, however, is to condemn the mode of argument that characterizes those who disagree as irrational, dishonest, or evil simply in virtue of that disagreement: I am more concerned about a habit of mind that seems to be growing among my fellow Christians, both political liberals and conservatives. That is, we seem to mimic the secular world’s conflation of disagreement with wickedness, as if not sharing my worldview places my critic outside the realm of rational discourse…I’ve seen similar habits expressed by people on both sides of the net neutrality debate. For example, in Matt Stoller’s presentation at the YearlyKos convention, he admits that he doesn’t understand the relevant technical issues (and proceeds to demonstrate it by suggesting that “non-neutrality” will cause dropped calls, when in fact it’s non-neutral QoS that will prevent them). He asserts that it is fun to beat up on “these bad people” and that it is very important that Mike McCurry be personally vilified. That’s explicit endorsement of irrationality, of emotional demogoguery over fact and reason, and should be condemned by everyone in this debate. Ed Brayton concludes: But rational people, people who care about truth and accuracy, must fight this tendency. We must try and evaluate every claim using the same criteria. Does the evidence support it? Are the conclusions drawn from the evidence logical? Any claim that fails to meet those criteria should be rejected, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. Likewise, any claim that withstands that scrutiny should be accepted as valid, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. None of us will ever be Mr. Spock, but we should strive to evaluate all arguments as though we have no stake in the outcome. Some, like the STACLU crowd, make no attempt at all to do so; we should not emulate them.I agree.

For those looking for a series of arguments in favor of network neutrality, blogger Douglas Ross has put together an index like mine of his postings on the subject. I’ve not read all of them, and have disagreed with most of the ones I have read (e.g., Ross thinks it’s OK to ban QoS because it can’t possibly work, even though it does work and is in use in major Internet backbones like Global Crossing’s; we had an extended exchange in response to my list of Phoenix-area broadband options). So check out his writings, and think critically. If you think he’s got some good arguments for imposing net neutrality regulations, let me know.

It’s been a while since I gave an update on the number of homes for sale in Phoenix–the inventory has continued to balloon since the last report on March 10: 3/7/2006 36953 3/8/2006 37487 3/9/2006 37626 3/10/2006 37531 3/11/2006 38011 3/12/2006 38184 3/13/2006 38169 3/14/2006 38003 3/15/2006 38197 3/16/2006 38574 3/17/2006 38602 3/18/2006 39074 3/19/2006 38972 3/20/2006 38822 3/21/2006 39159 3/22/2006 38982 3/23/2006 39043 3/24/2006 39271 3/25/2006 39381 3/26/2006 39504 3/27/2006 39817 3/28/2006 39784 3/29/2006 39765 3/30/2006 39948 3/31/2006 40192 4/1/2006 40177 4/2/2006 40182 4/3/2006 40012 4/4/2006 40050 4/5/2006 40332 4/6/2006 40739 4/7/2006 40612 4/8/2006 41124 4/9/2006 41393 4/10/2006 41018 4/11/2006 42266 4/12/2006 42327 4/13/2006 42257 4/14/2006 42561 4/15/2006 42592 4/16/2006 42775 4/17/2006 42874 4/18/2006 42523 4/19/2006 42840 4/20/2006 43017 4/21/2006 43236 4/22/2006 43385 4/23/2006 43502 4/24/2006 43697 4/25/2006 43344 4/26/2006 43427 4/27/2006 44024 4/28/2006 43886 4/29/2006 44022 4/30/2006 44290 5/1/2006 44229 5/2/2006 43900 5/3/2006 43966 5/4/2006 44162 5/5/2006 44422 5/6/2006 44094 5/7/2006 44575 5/8/2006 44777 5/9/2006 44609 5/10/2006 44898 5/11/2006 45097 5/12/2006 45356 5/13/2006 45502 5/14/2006 45619 5/15/2006 45697 5/16/2006 45705 5/17/2006 45675 5/18/2006 46064 5/19/2006 46189 5/20/2006 46049 5/21/2006 46734 5/22/2006 46753 5/23/2006 46965 5/24/2006 46856 5/25/2006 47133 5/26/2006 47225 5/27/2006 47582 5/28/2006 47591 5/29/2006 47633 5/30/2006 47722 5/31/2006 47542 6/1/2006 47187 6/2/2006 47191 6/3/2006 47848 6/4/2006 47877 6/5/2006 47979 6/6/2006 48218 6/7/2006 48106 6/8/2006 48365 6/9/2006 48579 6/10/2006 48870 6/11/2006 48889 6/12/2006 49040 6/13/2006 49132 6/14/2006 49237 6/15/2006 49052 6/16/2006 49435 My first report, last October, showed an increase in inventory from 10,748 homes on July 20, 2005 to 19,254 on October 2. We’re now at a 459% increase in inventory in the just under 11 months. (But see Einzige’s comment on what counts as evidence of a housing bubble…) ...

Bush has signed the legislation raising fines on broadcast “indecency.” Adam Thierer gives the scorecard for First Amendment protections on various forms of media: MEDIA PLATFORM / FIRST AMENDMENT STATUS Newspapers = Full First Amendment protection Magazine = Full First Amendment protection Cable TV = Full First Amendment protection Satellite TV = Full First Amendment protection Movies = Full First Amendment protection DVDs = Full First Amendment protection CDs = Full First Amendment protection Satellite Radio = Full First Amendment protection Internet = Full First Amendment protection Blogging = Full First Amendment protection i-Pods = Full First Amendment protection Podcasts = Full First Amendment protection Video Games = Full First Amendment protection ...

The New Republic’s editors have come out in favor of net neutrality. As is all-too-common, their reasoning is based, at least in part, on a factual error: Under the original rules put in place in 1934, telecommunications companies can’t give preferential treatment to one set of outgoing calls over another by, say, offering static-free calling to one company’s telemarketers but not another’s. The same rules initially applied to the Internet. Telecom companies couldn’t charge website proprietors to have their content sent to consumers more expeditiously. But, last August, George W. Bush’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) exempted telecoms that provide Internet connections from these restrictions, dealing a blow to both entrepreneurship and political discourse.I’ve italicized the false statement. TNR has, like many others, wrongly inferred that rules which applied solely to telco telephony and last-mile networks have also applied to the Internet and Internet Service Providers, when in fact ISPs and backbone providers have been under no such constraints. If net neutrality proposals were limited to maintaining Title II requirements for unbundling and interconnection for common carriers (which is part of the REFORM proposal advocated by Global Crossing, which includes other points which are far more important than net neutrality for fostering competition in telecommunications), or even adding cable providers into that category, I might support them. UPDATE: I should point out that some Internet backbones have been or are owned by entities which are common carriers in virtue of the fact that they have owned and operated long-distance telephone networks. This includes MCI, Sprint, and Global Crossing (more accurately, Global Crossing Telecommunications, Inc.). However, the FCC has always held that common carriage requirements do not apply to Internet interconnection. Eli M. Noam’s 1994 paper, “Beyond Liberalization II: The Impending Doom of Common Carriage," appears to have been rather prescient. He argues that common carriage is not sustainable in a competitive environment, and looks at possible hybrid approaches that mix common carriage and contract carriage (I kind of like his “common carrier rights of way” approach, which advocates of open source will find similar to the GPL). He regretfully concludes that common carriage will go away and that the hybrid approaches are not sustainable.

Unsurprisingly (she used William Dembski as a consultant), her book’s coverage of evolution is crap: It contains the usual stock creationist crap presented at a rapid pace, full of the usual bald assertions of outright lies, intentional misinterpretations, and lots and lots of quote mining. Seriously, it looks like every paragraph contains multiple falsehoods or screwy manglings of science. She claims Darwin’s theory is “one step above Scientology in scientific rigor”, that it is a “tautology”, that there is “no proof in the scientist’s laboratory or the fossil record”, and the only reason it’s still around is that “liberals think evolution disproves God." ...

On June 9, the Hands Off the Internet blog posted an entry (http://handsoff.org/tiered-service/turf-battle/) about one of my posts, but it was deleted by June 10. I wonder if they noticed my Creative Commons license, considered their use to be commercial, and decided not to risk a violation? In my opinion, their excerpt would be fine under fair use. Here’s the post, from Google cache. Turf Battle June 9, 2006 at 9:21 am - Tiered Service, Net Neutrality, Debate, Internet Legislation, Consumer Benefit ...

The FCC levied a record-breaking $3.3 million fine against 103 CBS affiliates for airing a repeat episode of “Without a Trace” on December 31, 2004, before 10 p.m. which involved “a simulated group sex scene at a high school party.” CBS has protested on the grounds that all 4,211 complaints were submitted via the Parents Television Council and American Family Affiliation websites, and only two complaints referred to actually seeing the offending scene. (Remember, the FCC is the organization net neutrality advocates want to give the power to regulate content. The power to mandate content will no doubt bring along the power to prohibit content.)

Astronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station was the first to witness the Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian island chain erupting three weeks ago, and took this nice photo. Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.

Mare Nostrum computer at the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, housed in a 1920s cathedral. (Via BLDGBLOG.)