If you run a blog, you know about "comment spam." This blog is often hit by people who want to sell you a credit card or, more recently, want to turn your gold into cash (for them, not you). Our hosting service, Typepad, has a filter that blocks some of them. Others get deleted only after I see them on the list of comments. Spammers try to fool these techniques with empty messages liked "Great post. I agree with you completely." Of course, whenever I see that on one of my posts, I know it's a fake.

On this morning's comment list, I immediately spied a cogently argued and insightful point about small-business bankruptcies. It was comment spam only with a new tactic. They had copied and pasted something I had written as the body of the comment and then tried to sell you a credit card. It had to be deleted, despite the brilliance of my the writing.