From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 19:00:12 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: article for cypherpunks (fwd)
Message-ID: <199407300200.TAA28554@netcom2.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Irony of ironies! Keith Henson, who I was just minutes ago writing
about, just asked me to forward an article to the CP list. 

--Tim


Forwarded message:
From hkhenson@cup.portal.com Fri Jul 29 18:52:47 1994
From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com
To: tcmay@netcom.com
Subject: article for cypherpunks
Lines: 34
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 18:52:14 PDT
Message-ID: <9407291852.1.22724@cup.portal.com>
X-Origin: The Portal System (TM)

Tim, could you pass this on?  If not just can it.  thanks, keith
------
This is in reference to postings by Patrick May and Hal Finney on 
controlling what kids see on the net. 
 
My oldest daughters are mid 20s, the youngest is preteen.  The older 
ones were prodigious and early readers.  When they were growing up the 
house was full of Penthouse or worse (we rented rooms to university 
students) and they had free access to a large collection of the 
*worst* of the underground comics, stuff by R. Crum and S. Clay 
Wilson.  If you have never see these, perhaps one title, _Captain 
Pissgums and his Pervert Pirates_ will give you the flavor.  They read 
*all* of them, plus all of my old collection of Mad Magazines, many SF  
books, and during those years I read them the Tolkien books--twice.   
We did not have TV for most of those years, so they did a lot more  
reading than the average kids.  At the time (early to mid 70s) it  
never occurred to me to try to control what they were reading.  
 
They turned out fine, I consider them responsible adults.  However,  
there is one story from those days which shows that they *were*  
influenced by such an environment.  Once on their way home from grade  
school (5th and 3rd I think), they were accosted by a flasher.  Now,  
they *knew* about flashers--from the comic books.  Was this a traumatic  
experience to find one in (so to speak) the flesh?  Nope.  I found out  
about it when I heard them grousing that the flasher had bugged out  
when they asked him to stay while they rounded up a bunch of their  
friends to see the flasher! 
 
If parents want to *try* to keep their kids away from certain material  
on or off the nets, I don't have a problem with that.  But as far as I  
have ever been able to determine, there is not much point in doing so. 
 
I asked Tim to post this for me because at the moment I don't need any  
more problems :)


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."