Saturday Night Open thread

Of course I'm joking with the title of this post. Flares doesn't generate a lot of comments -- lately even my beloved Chinese Spambots have deserted me -- so an open thread would be asking for more humiliation than I've already invited with my polls. I've been doing a wee bit of blog maintenance, and just wanted to mention the changes.

First, speaking of comments, I've added the ability for people to log on using OpenID. That choice is now available in the box that pops up when you go to add a comment. 

Secondly I've added a couple of new links to the top of the two right rails. Realizing our email was nowhere to be found on the site, I've added a 'Contact Me' button to the rightmost rail. It pops up a form that will send an email to us. At the moment I have that email going to my account. I know we have a yargb account at gmail, but for the life of me I can't remember or find the password to it. If anybody knows, send it on to me and I'll switch the contact form to point to it.

I've also added a 'Log into Flares' button to the top of the inner rail. I'm always amused at the thought that newer viewers of the blog must wonder why there is such a humongous list of contributors when it must seem I'm the only one posting. A bit of history -- we started out as a group of commentors from Roger Simon's pre-Pajamas Media blog and grouped together so we had a place to post articles without the need to individually maintain a blog. Most have moved on, but  from time to time the other folks still do post articles. So, I'm just entertaining myself by keeping the candles burning -- besides, our archives still get a fair amount of traffic. Nothing sadder than a dormant blog.

Anyway, back to the 'Log into Flares' button. I've gotten a couple of emails lately where contributors had forgotten their password, changed email addresses or weren't sure their accounts were active. It occurred to me some folk might not even remember where to go to add an article. That link takes you to our dashboard where you can login if'n you get the urge.

Finally I've added a couple of links: Bob's Blog and ISRO. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) link is part of my latest scheme -- linking to Indian sites to cover that neglected part of the Anglosphere.

By the way, in the likely event that my joke is too obscure, the picture of Duchamp's bicycle wheel readymade is in homage to Charles "Nuttier than a Fruitcake" Johnson of LGF who, in between obsessing over Creationism, has posted a seemingly infinite series of articles featuring pictures of bicycle wheels, spokes, chains, pedals and the like.