Indeed so. In fact each of the "in ya face" links on the welcome page has an entry in the link block. Doesn't seem to have prevented the author(s) of the welcome page from thinking it helpful/friendly/cute/... to feature them prominently as has been done.

Having the link block on every page doesn't stop me having a RAT bookmark button in my browser tool bar either. There are so many links in that block that I don't see any of them most of the time. Having the links sorted or grouped in some fashion might help, but that's another discussion.