Verification of Comments

I've added a feature to this blog that requires readers verify they are sentient beings before leaving a post. Sadly, I've been getting more spam lately and want to cut it out. Spam is easy to delete, but as many of you know, it can become time-taxing and a regular annoyance. Other bloggers have been using different approaches to solve this problem, including eliminating comments all together. I don't want to do that, or even limit comments to those registered with blogger, so I've added the verification feature.

On a related note, I get frustrated because our government vilifies spam, passes laws against it, and increasingly wants to regulate the Internet to control it. But, the government doesn't seem to care about junk mail we get via the USPS. Now, I'm not so naive to think it doesn't have to do with money. Small government advocates (who used to be republicans, but now I'm not so sure) would say we give too much money to the USPS already and that "direct mailers" helped keep the USPS afloat and the price of stamps lower. That may be true, but when viewed holistically, the time it takes to eliminate the mail so one's identity can't be stolen and the space it takes in landfills must equal, if not outweigh, the financial loss to the government. I admit this is more an armchair theory than a well-researched argument, but I wonder.

The moral of the story is: please verify you are a human when adding comments to this blog. Thanks.