I just need to interject here that goatse is a hermaphrodite.

I am convinced... google it if you don't believe me

Bruce, if you use Windows I strongly suggest you try Mailwasher Pro. This program runs before your mail client, and you can filter out unwanted mail. The nice thing about Mailwasher is that you can "bounce" selected mail back to the sender, and it looks like a genuine bounce - ie. that your email address does not exist.

I have been using it for years, and I can verify that it works. I have reduced my junk mail by 99%.

Before people start flaming me, to say that this won't work because spammers use fake return addresses, I understand that, but many do use real addresses. All I can say is that it works for me, and also for several other people I have recommended Mailwasher to.

The process of building your "friends" list, and your "blacklist" list, can be a little manual, but over time you will find that you have to add fewer addresses because you will have already built up a substantial database. It is worth the effort! Mailwasher does have some automated features, too.

They same people also have a product called Benign which scans your emails for potentially harmful code (this is much more than a virus scanner). I can also recommend it.

Goatse is an image of a naked guy bent over, shoving his butt into the camera and spreading his anus open wide enough to pass a softball. It's pretty nasty. He's got both hands in there. It's amazing that an anus can open that wide. I felt violated after I saw that image.

UT thinks he may be a hermaphrodite. I suppose it's possible, but I'm not going back to the picture to examine the theory.

It's an image that has been posted for its shock value on many discussion forums. People think it's funny to trick others into clicking on a link that opens the goaste image. I saw it on Fark.com once. That was the final straw that got me to stop visiting that board.

The chances of a child stumbling over it while doing research are very slim. If they take a break from the research and start surfing around on the different discussion boards, the chances increase.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx

"Some have claimed that "he" is actually a hermaphrodite, and he is actually pulling open his vagina. The developer of this theory later admitted that the theory was never intended to be serious, though some continue to believe the theory is correct."

Perhaps the chances of a kid stumbling upon Goatse are pretty small in the interest of research, but it can't be argued that it's extremely easy to stumble on stuff that you really don't want to see sometimes (at least while you're not in the mood :p )

For example, just the other day a discussion I was a part of on another forum got to the subject of that "mutant" kid, the one who was born with high muscle definition who is now 4 years old and flat out buff. One person spoke of a boy she'd heard about from Germany whose parents were body builders and raised him as one too. At age 9, the kid looked like Arnold himself. I had seen a picture recently (it might have been on Cellar somewhere) of a boy who fit that description and I couldn't remember where I saw it. I wanted to find it to show her and ask if that was the kid she had heard about. So, I go to Google images and search "bodybuilder boy". I got all KINDS of images of all KINDS men (some of them rather scrumptious I might add :D) and nearly all of them showing the world their stats and then some...and then some MORE.

Now, I didn't find what I saw particularly offensive (the male body can be a beautiful thing) but it certainly wasn't what I was looking for and I never managed to find that picture, even after modifying my search string. But if I had a kid, I'd at least want to know when he/she was running into this stuff so I could talk with him/her about it. Let's face it, sex is everywhere. A kid would have to live in a bubble or out in the middle of nowhere with no media access at ALL to really shelter them from it completely, especially these days. It'd be better to teach them about it as they encounter it, instead of attaching a DO NOT TOUCH!!! stigma to it. Besides, once they become teens they'll want to try and touch it as much as they can anyway, due to being rebellious, being curious or being hormone-y. Might as well have them know as much as possible before that point so they can hopefully make informed decisions instead of impulsive decisions.

Image searches are very dangerous. One of my stepson's favorite things to do is sit on my lap, and we'll do an image search for "tractor" (incidentally, I've found that altavista has the best image search engine by far) and he gets to look at all the neato tractor pictures.

Words like "tractor" are usually safe, but my stepdaughter wanted to do it too, looking for "princess" or "babydoll," etc. I told her no way (and tried to give a rough explanation why.) Searches for the word "peach" (as in Princess Peach from Super Mario Bros.) and "car" have even brought up a porn image or two.

There are four approaches to this issue.

The Joe Lieberman/Tipper Gore Gambit:
"There are adult-themed media out there in the world. Since a nine-year-old MIGHT catch a glimpse of a wayward bit of flesh or a naughty word, the world must be legislated down to a nine-year-old's maturity level to PROTECT THE CHILDREN, and the adults who enjoy adult-themed media as it was intended will have to do without their filth for the CHILDREN'S sake. We know better than parents as to what's best for their children."

This is sort of the overturn-the-Betamax-decision logic applied to morals issues: even though Media X has legal, non-infringing uses, if someone MIGHT misuse it it needs to be locked away where nobody can have it. The fallacy should be obvious, though it frightens me considerably that Orrin Hatch is currently leading the charge to apply such logic to entertainment and computer technology.

The Donald Wildmon/Rick Santorum Rampage:
"There are adult-themed media out there in the world. Since this is clearly against my interpretation of God's wishes, it must ALL BE DESTROYED and the purveyors of such filth should be locked away. We know better than everyone else as to what's best for everyone."

This is just silly, and would be a lot funnier if people who think like this weren't elected on a semi-regular basis.

The Thinking Parent's Response:
"There are adult-themed media out there in the world. I'm not going to go out of my way to deliberately plunk it in front of my child or say 'Anything goes', but maybe I should talk to my child once in a while regarding what he/she is seeing or is likely to see, to try and keep them in the right frame of mind as to how to handle adult-themed media."

The Non-Thinking Parent's Response:
"Porn? My little angel would never encounter such a thing, and certainly not deliberately."

Yes, my young friend ran into this problem with the search term "fairies." She was looking for pictures of those cute little imaginary creatures with wings, needless to say. I DID monitor that search and showed her how to use the google advanced search feature using "fairies NOT gay" as our search term. That got rid of most of the wierd stuff.

I feel Cyber Wolf is correct. That stuff is out there, and sooner or later a child or young adult is going to come across it. I think its better to allow a child free access to the net while at the same time monitoring and explaining anything unusual. Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest, and if a child is going to run across something like goatse (most children don't participate in discussion groups - aside from LJ ;) , how many 10 year olds do we have on the board?), better to have an understanding adult nearby who can explain things and impart whatever their moral beliefs may be on the situation. Otherwise, the kid is going to run into this stuff sooner or later and if its forbidden, have no one that they can talk to about it.

My mom used to watch a cooking show called "Two Fat Ladies". She called me one day to search for a recipe for her from the show. The things that came up in my search were disturbing, to say the least... apparently fat ladies go hand in hand with farm animals....

A friend's son wanted to find the site for Dick's Sporting Goods, which is a regional sporting goods chain.

He quickly found that www.dicks.com wasn't quite what he was looking for. (I don't WANT to know what's on the other end of that link, FYI.)

supressing visual... supressing visual.... :)

I remember back about 8 years ago or so, watching TV around Easter time, and they put up a news blurb in between shows to get you to tune in to the local nightly news.

They were interviewing a horrified little old lady who said "All I wanted was a recipe for hot crossed buns." The look on her face, and the image I had in my mind of what her search results must have been, was priceless.

:D Oh Lord, that's priceless! I laughed for about 5 minutes at that one. Hot crossed buns! No, I will not visualize hot crossed buns. I will not visualize hot crossed buns. Oh, my!:angel:

There are many programs that are available to parents to aid in blocking certain things from popping up during their kids surfing. You can block addresses, images, words, phrases, ect. If you have kids, these should be utilized. Not everyone wants to have the internet censored. I go to what some may call "objectionable sites".(i.e.: rotten.com, ogrish.com, goregasm.com, ect......) They are not for kids, but I don't want someone telling me not to go there because a 7-year-old in Bangor, Maine, might see the same site. Parents need to monitor their kids.