New feature: "Speakers' Corner," a permanent open thread

A number of the readers have told me that they like "open threads," and that we should have more of them. That's why today we're implementing "Speakers' Corner" - named after London's famous Speakers' Corner" - a permanent open thread that will sit forever at the top of the site (see the link at the upper right hand corner of the page). I may, or may not, regularly delete the comments in Speakers' Corner in order to give folks a clean start.

For those who aren't familiar, an "open thread" is a blog post that usually doesn't say much of anything, but simply gives the readers a chance to join in the comments and talk about whatever they want. Some of you might say, don't people do that anyway? A lot of people worry that they're going to be accused of being "OT," or "off topic," if they don't comment about the topic of the current blog post. Speakers Corner will hopefully fix that problem by letting you join in whenever you want, and talk about whatever you want: politics or baking or boys :-) Hope you enjoy, and thanks as always. JOHN