Geography of Hate map based on tweets across the country.

Since Twitter feeds were able to be aggregated on Google Maps, there have been Web sites that published all sorts of geographic representations of the things we say. But one of the more recent goes to greater length to determine just how racist and homophobic parts of the country are. Not surprisingly to folks around here, Houston fared pretty well.

The Geography of Hate map, is according to the Web site, part of a project to identify "geographic origins of online hate speech." Twitter's location feature makes this particularly easy and, as you can see from the above map, gives researchers a chance to zero in or specific hotspots.

The study looked for specific racial and gay slurs (disability slurs as well) between June 2012 and April 2013, more than 150,000 tweets total. But before the tweets were labeled as "hate speech," students read through every one of them and assigned a value of positive, negative or neutral. Only tweets given a negative rating were added to the list.

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If you don't follow social media closely (hey, good for you!), you may be wondering what the hell a Vine is and why it has been in the news lately? Good question. Vine is another free social media app for smartphones built to share super short videos in much the same way Instagram shares videos but without the old-school photo effects.

What makes Vine rather unique is that it allows the user to shoot only six seconds worth of video, which Vine's developers no doubt considered the video equivalent of Twitter's 140 characters That makes sense given the app was developed by and is owned by Twitter. The app is EXTREMELY simple to use -- one of my favorite things. Basically, a user opens the app, taps the camera button at the top right and touches the screen to start recording. The video automatically stops recording when you remove your finger, so you can create multiple snippets adding up to six seconds of video.

The results, as with most forms of social media, have been a mixed bag of creativity, inanity and...porn.

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When you have an NBA roster of fifteen players, and it's playoff time where the rotation shortens up and minutes become more precious, it's still up to every player on the roster to do their part to help the team bring home a win, night in and night out.

Each guy needs to do what he does best. James Harden needs to knock down jumpers. Omer Asik needs to protect the rim and grab boards. Chandler Parsons needs to do a little nit of everything.

And I suppose, if guys are doing what they do best, it would mean that Royce White is sitting on his couch in a robe and slippers spewing delusional, detrimental tweets. (I only say that tweeting is Royce White doing what he does best because it's impossible for him to impregnate an NBA player.)

And that's exactly what White is doing.

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Westboro Church: Feel free to ignore.

The Westboro Baptist Church, that nutty band of protestors that has been besmirching the fine name of Westboro for decades now, is coming to Waco to protest outside the memorial service for victims of the West blast.

Why? That's one question you need never ask about the activities of Westboro and its founder, Fred Phelps. The church's tenets are a confusing mishmash of homophobia and publicity-seeking, and none of it makes any sense (The small central Texas town of West: Hotbed of gay marriage?)

But Westboro has announced they're coming to the service to protest. So how should they be covered by media? Five ways:

5. Don't cover them.

Whatever you do, don't devote any airtime, newshole or bandwidth to -- d'oh!!! Damn you, Phelps!!

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This is how rumors get started. Take a Facebook page or Indigogo campaign started days or even weeks ago, change the name of it and what it is about on the day of the attack on the Boston Marathon and let the conspiracy theories fly. In at least two cases thus far -- one really odd and one fairly straightforward -- the world of conspiracy nuts were turned upside down for a day or so, and we're not even talking about the Alex Jones #falseflag nonsense (if you don't know, don't ask).

First was an innocuous Facebook page the owner created on Saturday, but changed on Monday to honor the victims of the Boston attack. The "Thoughts Go Out to All Involved In The Boston Explosions" Facebook fan page has garnered over 1,400 likes since the bombing, but it also prompting conspiracy theorists to wonder out loud how someone could have started a page on Saturday about something that hadn't happened yet. Truth is, Facebook allows administrators to change the name of any fan page as long as it hasn't reached a certain number of likes yet. This page had not reached that threshold and the owner changed it.

But, it was enough to get the attention of a bunch of people including MSN's Rumor page.

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Less than 24 hours after the worst bombing on American soil since 9/11, one of my friends posted on Facebook a picture of Darth Vader riding a unicycle wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes. I scroll through my Twitter feed and see the familiar jokes, memes, posts about food and talk of the Rockets and the Texans draft mixed in with a smattering of tweets related to the tragedy at the Boston Marathon. Even the trending topics (see the image to the right) are still filled with things like #talklikeyourmom and #theperksofdatingme.

Resilience? I don't think so. Desensitization? Probably not. Alyson Footer, the former Astro social media coordinator and current correspondent for Major League Baseball, explained to me a couple years ago for a story I was working on that the news cycle used to run 24 hours. "Now it's 24 seconds," she said.

The argument against this is that we are a nation of inattentives. We spend our time fixated on our phones and tablets and even the occasional computer screen. But one thing that narrative -- one so common to older generations for decades, probably centuries (KIDS THESE DAYS!) -- fails to comprehend is that social networking requires interaction, unlike distractions of the past including TV, radio and the like.

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This December 7 in Baytown at the Royal Purple Speedway, you can run in sheer, pants-shitting terror from raging bulls just like they do in Pamplona, Spain, each summer.

The Great Bull Run's organizers urge participants to "grab life by the horns and experience the rush of a lifetime as you sprint down a quarter-mile track with 12 1,000-pound bulls hot on your heels," which sounds like a horrific nightmare.

Or the most awesome thing ever.

If you aren't up for being possibly gored, maimed, paralyzed or made dead by a half-ton bull, you can participate in the Tomato Royale, a giant tomato fight.

The GBR is happening in nine locations across the country, from San Francisco to Virginia.

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A funny thing happened last week in Facebook world. As a means of, I suppose, helping people better identify their moods or what they are eating at the moment, Zuckerberg Inc. added a new feature to status updates. They had already changed "Say something" to "How are you feeling?" in the status field, prompting many, MANY "I'm doing fine, thanks Facebook" half-hearted humor attempts. But then they went the full Monty and dropped smilies (and photos of foods like ice cream and links to movies like The Notebook, shudder) into the status update box.

Seeing the smilies immediately reminded me of another wondrous social network: MySpace. Remember MySpace, kids? Sure you do. It was that Web site where glittery profile pages and random hookups were the order of the day. Bands used it, too, but if you wanted to have cyber sex with a 16-year-old whose page was covered with My Little Ponies, MySpace was your home away from home.

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Not real.

Someone with a lot of time on their hands and a burning desire to -- what? embarrass Joel Osteen? -- has put together several Web sites advancing the idea that the rich megachurch preacher is quitting.

The hoax includes Web pages, fake news stories, a YouTube video and a Twitter account.

To a tweeter who actually doubted @PastorJoelOsteen, he (or she) replied: "Nothing fake here. The church controls almost all the accts in my name. They've cut off and seized my accts. Theyre panicking".

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As the saying goes, you've got to get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on us. Apparently, in at least two cases yesterday, people got up DAMN early because a couple of our writers got caught with their virtual pants down.

We know conspiracy theorists think the media is involved in some sort of plot to conceal the truth about FEMA, concentration camps and aliens serving on the secret service (we've already said too much), but, in reality, most of us are just trying to find good story content for our readers. We WISH we had a line on aliens in the White House. Holy crap, that would be awesome!

But, when April Fool's Day comes around every year, most of us know to take publicity with a very large grain of salt or fall prey to a prank. Same goes for every form of social media where it seems everyone becomes a jokester for one day of the year and 99 percent of them are not remotely funny. For one of our writers, the damage was minimal -- exchanged embarrassing e-mails, that sort of thing. The second, however, got the story online for the public to behold. What makes it even funnier is that both writers who were fooled are regulars and very savvy guys online and off -- nevermind the veteran journalists who edit them. Eep!

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