Today’s comic features Justin McDowell (web designer and founder of Ignite Lincoln) and the Squirrel dealing with the decidedly first world problem of a slow broadband connection while discussing Chilean miners. In short, it’s all about tubes.

I’m claustrophobic to an incredible degree, a trait I attribute to my lifelong battle with asthma and my general impression that smaller spaces contain less air. I cannot fathom what spending over two months trapped a half-mile underground in a collapsed mine must be like. It’s amazing that the men involved have held together as well as they have, and almost as incredible is everything that’s been delivered safely to them through a four-inch wide, half-mile long tube. Sandwiches, drinks, videos, clothing, books.

The fact that they’re about to be winched upwards to the surface world says something about how humans can come together in such trying times to accomplish something so incredibly difficult.

It’s entirely trite to compare such a feat to broadband Internet access. But I’m going there, because I’m a classy guy. Both my home connection and that of my workplace go through Comcast. Over the past week, both locations have had service levels I could compare to my 1995 dial-up connection when I’d log in to play Ultima Online or spend fifteen minutes downloading one naughty photo. What I’m trying to say is that hand-delivering the packets of information would result in a faster speed than what I’m currently experiencing.

What drives me crazy about such things is that for all extents and purposes, this is exactly what Comcast promises. Any of their service packages guarantee up to a maximum level of service, but not a minimum.

I’d like to repeat that. I pay them good money to guarantee that they won’t exceed a level of service, but they can fall as short of that as they please. I wonder how well that would work for other business models. Buy up to a whole hamburger… but maybe you’ll get just the bun. Buy up to a whole website… but maybe you’ll just get a half-finished splash page.

It’s a classic old gem at this point, but I think Penny Arcade’s treatment of the topic goes straight to the point of how I’d prefer to pay such a variable service.

The overall poor quality of American broadband access in comparison to other first-world nations is something I could rant about for hours. Instead I’ll get over myself, link you this hilarious hat picture of Justin I found while getting reference photos of him for the comic, and wish the miners all the best luck in the final hours of their ordeal. ¡Vive Chile!