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Birmingham has Hurst St if you need a gay venue; 3 places that do food, 2 nightclubs & at least 8 bars/pubs theres a gay writing group you could see the inspirations for Lord of the Rings, or Thomas the Tank Engine see the new library (largest in the UK) 'more miles of canal than Venice' & you even go on a canal boat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_of_Birmingham

'Google' as a website is the search site whether you go to .com, .co.uk, or any other domain ending, you get their search site/interface all their other sites are as Google the company if we look at it in a different way, ie. what are the most important companies on the internet based on all their domains/properties, then that changes it; for Windows users: Microsoft MacOS/iOS: Apple Android: Google Linux: distro providers website those are where your computer & phone go to to get updates, much more important than any other sites

some more data! http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/internet.html web parent companies = all of their sites, so google includes all google sites/services, google+, gmail, youtube etc shows just how 'sticky' facebook is, especially when it dosnt do search/email/documents/etc http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/september-2012-top-us-web-brands/ people spent almost as long on youtube as they did on all google branded sites (search, plus, docs) google's concern will be that even combining all the google sites, facebook still had peoples attention for an extra 3 hours, & that as facebook runs their own advertising platform google makes zero revenue from facebook as for content v indexing i would say that depends on the content itself, how visible the provider of that content makes it, & whether the original site has a decent index/search function as examples; if i want a weather forecast, i dont go to google/bing/etc, i go direct to bbc.co.uk/weather its an easily remembered address, its also linked from all the bbc pages. the same is the case with news & their other services the bbc make content very visible on their front page, its logically organised into site categories, & they have their own search function. in that case, content provider is more important than search engine if i want to look up a word definition, or more detail on a subject, i go straight to wikipedia they also have their own search function, & of course the linking between the pages > content more important than search engine

I didnt say that Google isnt important, i said that they, like all search engines, are less important than the major sites they index. (also, your first & third sentences are contradictory) some interesting data from 2011 that puts that into context; Google is currently the most popular website online, but people are spending more time on Facebook, according to The Nielsen Company. Nielsen reports that Google was visited more than 152 million times in March. Facebook was second, with 135 million visits, followed by Yahoo!, MSN Windows Live, Bing and YouTube. While people spent an average of an hour and 21 minutes on Google, they spent more than 6.5 hours on Facebook.

Important in terms of what? what is the metric & context being used? As for google/bing/etc, as they are only search engines & dont produce content, they only exist because other sites actually produce content for them to index. Therefore the sites they index must be more 'important' than them. Also, i am perfectly capable of finding the BBC, NYT etc without the use of a search engine. (i would actually use wikipedia/google/bing after using those sort of sites if i wanted more information on the topic)

There is no direct connection between the ancient greek olympics & the modern olympic games so any arguments for retaining wrestling based on 'because it was in the original olympics' are void. theres loads of other 'sports' that were also in the greek olympics & no longer exist, therefore if you want to use this as the basis, you must support the re-introduction of those events. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. the ancient olympics (greek) ended approx 400AD PC was inspired by a 1890 visit to the Wenlock Olympic Games, which had been founded in 1850 the National Olympian Association (UK) was founded in 1865, & held the first Olympic Games in London in 1866. there were annual Olympic Games held in Liverpool 1862-1867, & their programme of events was used for the 1896 games (the first modern ones under the IOC) there was no wrestling at the 1900 Paris Games the 1904 Games only had 1 nation participating in wrestling (the US) so theres 2 Olympics in a row that didnt have wrestling as an international event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrestling_at_the_Summer_Olympics

Should of course point out that the current/modern olympics has no connection with the original greek olympics

ever come across the phrase 'extreme maleness'

well heres some feedback; get your definition of feedback correct to start with! clicking 'like' IS feedback clicking 'follow' IS feedback rating a story IS feedback even continuing to read a multi-chapter story IS feedback (*) if a reader then chooses to expand on any of the above by writing a review etc, then that is their choice, in exactly the same way that an author has a choice as to whether they continue to write also, feedback is not just an opinion, it can be factual, eg spelling, factual/logical errors etc as for written feedback on a completed story, is there any point? if its about correcting something, then it at least has some use. if its just to say 'great story', then the rating system & 'like' achieves precisely that & in a measurable way. (*) if an author chooses to ignore these valid forms of feedback, well thats their choice, but they cant then moan about the lack of feedback or if the system isnt making authors explicitly aware of these feedback measurements, then that should be fixed

http://updates.gawker.com/post/34759402826/national-novel-writing-month-begins-today-and National Novel Writing Month begins today, and with it, the celebration of internet culture known as #NaNoWriMoOpeners: NaNoWriMo is something of an online tradition, when people who may not do much reading and certainly even less writing agree to put inexperience behind them and create an entire novel in 30 days. Like looking at a schematic an eight-year-old has drawn up for a treehouse, most NaNoWriMo works focus on wish-fulfillment at odds with basic rules, helpful guidelines, good taste or reality. NaNoWriMo also doesn’t seem to impart many lessons — or at least heeded lessons. An unstructured exercise only works as a learning tool if you have willing readers with a critical eye or the kind of self-awareness that allows you to discover the errors in style and structure you missed while writing. Mostly, it relies on the familiar non-writer’s fallacy that writing is like talking, and anyone can do it. You already tell funny stories out loud, so the essential difference between that and a novel is time: novels are longer, and writing is slower because there’s typing involved. NaNoWriMo is a game of endurance, and nothing makes that more obvious than reading its output. Which is why, thankfully, nobody here has written one. Like last year, a group of Twitter wags have instead written only the opening lines to masterpieces that the universe, in its wisdom, will one day complete via random chance.

isnt their demise tied in with 'sci-fi' being much more mainstream that it used to be? > the main channels all pick up a sci-fi show each, & therefore those shows arnt on syfy syfy then has less content, & the advertising spend shifts back to the main networks > theres also the prolifieration of channels, so what content there is is being spread much thinner syfy is then bidding against all these new channels for content, & is bound to lose some stuff, & not bid for others

who lived here?

Tommy Hilfiger's house is the only US one that looks nice, the others are horrid!

93109 views 137 chapters = ~680 readers

maybe your looking in the wrong place for feedback? as at this writing; there have been 29 ratings, & its a 5star story 149 are following it ~40 have clicked 'like this' & dont forget that the number of readers isnt recorded anywhere, if it was that would be a good feedback metric those 29 ratings might not seem many, but i, & probably a lot of others, will rate a story once its finished, not whilst its still being written. i would think the same applies for reviews, do you really expect people to write a review for every chapter? (it seems daft that you cant leave a review for the whole story!)