Because you demanded it:

I've been getting a lot of requests to open up a "comments" section, so I did.

Previously I did not for three reasons:

1) An embarrassingly low number of comments;

2) Too many comments and too little time to respond;

3) The comment spammers. Now I'm not offended by mainstream pornography, and I'd be loathed to use organs of the state to punish anything other than child-pornography, but some of those porn comment spammers feature really bizarre stuff. Not that I've checked, but you need only look at the names of the titles that they leave. I think blogger might have a defense against comment spammers. Not sure.