I recently installed a common browser add-in (common as in versions for several different browsers) called ghostery. This addin lets you know how many and of what type, of trackers a website has. It also allows you to block such trackers on a website by website basis. For those that don't know these trackers record which websites you visit.
Anyway, what I would like to know is why the google analytics tracker is active on here and can I block it with impunity.
TR
Ghostery is good stuff.
Google Analytics is common fare to see what users are doing on a web page. It's anonymised and aggregated data of a much better quality (=more accurate) than local solutions like awstats can provide. There's really nothing sinister about it.
If it bothers you, you can block it here without breaking a thing (except not showing up in stats).