Blogger spam + McEuen novel

Two unrelated topics.  First, blogger needs to get their act together regarding comment spam.  They have some attempt at automatic spam detection, but it's clear that in the last two or three weeks people have figured out how to evade their blocking algorithm.  The spam comments quote some fragment of the original blog post or a previous comment, and then have a clickable username that links to some shady vendor website.  Very annoying.  I'd really rather not shift to a moderated comments approach, but I may have to if this keeps up.

Second, I was very surprised last weekend when reading the Wall Street Journal, and coming upon an article about Paul McEuen (author link, physicist link), who has written apparently a very successful novel.  As one of my friends exclaimed upon hearing this news when I told her at the APS, come on Paul - you're again making the rest of us look like lazy underachievers!  I'm going to have to get this on kindle....