As you may have observed, as I have, the twitosphere* seems to be spawning a new generation of undesirables; just like all other areas of the online connected world has done for years. The problem with ‘Tweet-Jerks’ is it seems to be operating totally unnoticed by the tweeting population of the web. Evidence the fact that honest tweeters pick up the tweet-jerks and re-tweet it. This causes a chain of tweet-jerks, and indirectly implicates the innocent tweeter — while taking a possibly unscrupulous tweeter viral.

Many tweets I find in the twittersphere are tweets of tweets of tweets. A number of tweeters we’ve started following have evidenced a habit of tweeting the very same tweets repeatedly at intervals throughout several days. It’s sort of a sleazy way of getting your web blog mentioned and seen, but it appears to work.

I’ve also found tweeters tweeting as if the idea were theirs, when it was previously tweeted by umpteen tweeters in the tweet-jerks chain. This too is sort of slimy. There should be a rule that if you TWEET, then make sure you should tweet the ORIGINAL resource, rather than blogs that point to blogs that point to blogs.

One found today tweets about someone else’s blog, but pulls their blog up in a FRAME on the tweeter’s web site. That’s just downright dishonest.

The blogsphere is also suffering from the same cancer — growing at an alarming rate. I have watched one malignant blog for some time as it spereads across the internet. So far, the blogger has spread to ten blogs, all originating from the same IP block, domains owned by the same owner, etc. But each of the blogs are named totally different, have a totally different look and feel, and even claim to be authored by totally different people. Of course there are blinking ads everywhere, even in the middle of the context of the blog post. These are blogatutes. (Like prostitutes.)

The MO goes like this: the blogger gathers pictures from other people’s Flickr or Deviant Art sites, then puts them in a page promoting “10 wonderful somethings..” or “30 killer this or that…” This seems to excite other bloggers who then feverishly blog about it. (Since they don’t actually anything original to blog about on their own.) Then the jerks-blogger will use an automated program to post the SAME content to the other ten blogs plus their accounts for Delicious, Stumble, FaceBook, MySpace and umpteen others they’re propagating. Then they cross-comment it amongst other blogs and forums as if not associated with the blogs. So now you have a blog that points to a blog that points to a blog, and so forth, that all happen to be feeding the RSS channels as if they were unique works of journalism. Then thousands of innocent bloggers blog about the posting, resulting in what is termed “viral marketing”* — allowing the blog-jerks to make a living, doing nothing, with 10,000 times as many views and clicks as honest bloggers.

Some have even taken this to extremes by having a botnet or other automated IA crawl the web, posting links to any / every blog, forum or discussion group it can find. Now, that’s called SPAM, and it’s highly detested by forum and blog owners everywhere.

Enter Twitter:

Now these blogs become tweet-jerks by tweeting about their blogs. The twittersphere, in the relentless pursuit of ‘going viral’ tweets and retweets those tweets ad nauseam.

In the ‘old’ days, this same practice was called ‘cross posting.’ It was frowned upon by the honorable users of the internet. (And networks like Compuserve, Delphi and AOL long before the internet took off.) True journalists have disdain for quoting the wrong spokes person. Like a blog quotes “Joe smith said…” but when you track it down, Joe didn’t say it, he pointed to a NYT article where “Sam said…” but when you track that one down you find that Sam didn’t say it, he was quoting someone else. At some point you have no idea who said it, but Joe is taking the credit. Casual folk take it for gospel; not taking the effort to track it down before they quote it.

There’s really no law against it — it’s just sloppy and in poor taste. It’s what many have seen as the end of journalism*. Most of the twittersphere will say there’s nothing wrong with it because they’re too busy tweeting to get new followers. In reality it’s pretty underhanded — the jerks are exploiting the system for personal gain without doing much work or producing any worthy benefit for their readers.

Here’s my question: is this okay with you?

If you’re going to tweet, shouldn’t you tweet the originator of the tweeted subject — NOT another tweeter or blogger who tweeted or blogged about what they received or saw from another blog or tweet? Should the recipient of such tweets be forced to navigate back through a dozen layers of blogs to arrive at the originator of the subject of desire?

I’m just asking.

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“The other” has always held a fascination: people who come from a different culture, who dress differently, who wear their hair differently, who have different attitudes and values.

This curiosity about those who are different feeds the arts and culture. Artists, playwrights and novelists all explore the question of how different we are from each other.

In Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the Moor of Venice is such a deep mystery because he is black. But the passions of life that he experiences are common to all mankind. He is different, but oh so the same. From the time of Shakespeare, up to the age of television and international travel, views about lands afar were shaped by the arts. Canaletto’s paintings brought Venice alive for generations of Europeans who had never traveled there.

With the age of Victorian exploration, the museums in London became full of ethnographic exhibits that would fascinate the public who had not seen such extraordinary objects as an American Indian totem pole, an Eskimo anorak, an African witch doctor mask or an Arabian scimitar. These objects, everyday to the people who had made them, would arouse awe and wonder, and this, in turn, fueled imaginative stories about the world outside of Europe.

Only a very few were rich enough to travel to these exotic lands, and the stories they brought back would make them very popular on the speaking circuit. The temptation to exaggerate the difficulties they had faced in their travels, or the customs they had seen, must have been great, for no one would be invited to a dinner party to tell a bland and simple tale. So, the 19th century European view of the world beyond its borders became one of savage cannibals and heathen tribes, all of whom were a danger to the European traveler.

Those who are friends and allies are more easily understood. We take time to learn how they think and act, and easily forgive their foibles. But it is human nature to do the opposite with those whom we perceive as a threat. The Ottoman Empire, although a useful ally of Britain against Russia at the time of the Crimean War, was a rival to British interests in the Middle East. This rivalry fed misunderstanding and mistrust, much of which can be seen in the portrayal of Turks and the lands of the Ottoman Empire in the arts and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

These stereotypes hung on into the 20th century, too. For example, in Lawrence of Arabia’s memoirs, the depiction of his enemy is most unflattering. Very few visitors to Turkey today have actually watched the film “Midnight Express,” but we have all heard about the scenes depicting cruelty. All these images have seeped into the public psyche. When I first visited Turkey in the 1980s, an English lady I knew who was in her 90s was amazed. “My father fought against the Turks at the end of the last century,” she said. “He always said he would rather be killed than captured by a Turk, and now here you are going there… times are changing.”

It is just this very issue of perception and reality that makes Andrew Wheatcroft’s book a vital addition to the study of the Ottomans. The first six chapters are a fairly standard, clear and informative overview of Ottoman history and life, from the fall of Constantinople through to the end of World War I.

But in the course of his research, Wheatcroft discovered that the image of the Ottomans that we have in the West was skewed. The fall of Constantinople was termed “the darkest day in the history of the world,” and from then on, Europeans regarded the Turks with a mixture of horror and fascination. “Only a few writers did not make the Turks out to be subhuman,” according to Wheatcroft.

As he discovered that his own view of the Ottomans, shaped by the culture he had been raised in, did not stand up against the evidence, Wheatcroft addresses head on his prejudices. In the final two chapters, he calmly and succinctly, clearly and incisively, challenges the twin stereotypes of the Lustful Turk and the Terrible Turk.

Much of this misunderstanding came from ignorance. The harem was misunderstood by Western travelers because, as men, they were not admitted! Much of the misunderstanding also came from willful distortion to make a rival into an enemy. The Turks were seen so much as the antithesis of all Western values that the phrase “turning Turk” was coined to mean renouncing the social codes of the West.

The city of Stamboul became irresistible to travelers from 1800 onwards. They expected to find the city of their imagination: exotic, Oriental, full of mysterious veiled women. Artists and engravers had, after all, discovered what sold best! “European visitors, inflamed with Romantic notions, came expecting to discover the imaginary Orient” — and were disappointed.

But the Ottomans were not only misunderstood by the West. To their eastern neighbors, they were an alien and occupying force.

Wheatcroft recognizes that just as Europeans disdained the Turks, educated Ottomans repaid the compliment, accusing Westerners of ignorance and insensitivity. It was too easy for Western men to imagine scarlet lusts and violent passions of the hidden harem. But many Ottoman officials took offense at the way Christian men and women mixed together at parties. One visitor to London wrote, “We returned to our lodgings and prayed to God to save us from the wretched state of these infidels.”

As Westerners worked with Turks on government projects during the Tanzimat era, an Ottoman and a Western European would look at the same event and see things differently. Wheatcroft concludes, as the Ottoman Empire and the West came closer together in economic and political terms in the 19th century, the depth of understanding broadened.

A clear contrast is seen between the attitudes of two great British prime ministers: Gladstone and Disraeli. Disraeli was in the camp of “enthusiasts who find fulfillment in contact.” He described even the meanest merchant as looking like a sultan. Gladstone was one who “abominated every aspect of the alien world.” He described the Turk as an abomination.

In recognizing that contact did little to modify the stereotypes so deeply rooted in the West, Wheatcroft raises the question of how much power the images of art and literature create. The Ottomans are, he notes, the focus of fear and hatred in literature and portraits with remarkable consistency. Even though he comes from a bygone era, the Byronic mix of lust and cruelty continues to color European attitudes.

That contemporary Europeans rated the Ottomans as far as they did or did not measure up to Western standards is the main premise of “Dissolving Images.” Following peace with Russia, the Ottomans ceased to be feared for their warlike virtues, and this was replaced by envy and despising. Newly reformed Western Europe expected the same, at a quicker pace, in Turkey.

These were Wheatcroft’s conclusions in 1993. But some 15 years later, they are just as relevant for a European Union and Republic of Turkey trying to draw closer together. Everyone involved, on both sides, in Turkey’s EU ascension talks needs to read the last two chapters of “Dissolving Images” honestly and question in their heart whether they are viewing reality through Orientalist tinted lenses.

Despite Turkey being among the countries whose populations read the least number of books in a year, some promising campaigns have prevailed in the country.

The “I love reading” campaign at İstanbul’s Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School, which has been categorized by the European Union as a Transnational Young Entrepreneurship Project, could be seen as a step in the right direction to remedy people’s lack of interest in books.

In the “I love reading” campaign, aiming to get students to enjoy reading books, students come together with a famous Turkish author once every month after reading one of his or her books.

So far, Selim İleri, Sevinç Çokum, Ahmet Ümit, Sunay Akın, Nalan Barbarosoğlu, Ali Çolak, Ayşe Kulin, H. Salih Zengin, Haydar Ergülen, A. Ali Ural, Cemil Kavukçu, Ömer Erdem, Fatih Erdoğan and Beşir Ayvazoğlu have visited the school and had conversations with the students on their books to create awareness of reading and literature. In addition to the authors, renowned journalists Uğur Dündar, Banu Güven, Cem Erciyes, Abdullah Kılıç and Ahu Tanrıkulu also visited the school under the program.

After this campaign had been included among projects funded by the EU, Sweden was selected as the project’s partner. The reason behind choosing Sweden is its prominent place in the field of children’s literature.

The students were advised to read books by Swedish authors Ingelin Angerborn and Ulf Nilsson, who came to Turkey and talked to the students last month. Furthermore, 10 children living in the suburbs of Sweden will have the opportunity to meet famous Turkish authors in the campaign.

For the project, a book called “I Love Reading” has been put together. It includes works by the authors participating in the project and was handed out to the Swedish students in Stockholm. Ten of the most successful students who participated in the project came to İstanbul with two teachers to join the student-author meetings in Bağcılar. They met with the writers whose books they had read and asked them some questions on their books. In addition to meeting the authors, the Swedish students also visited sights in İstanbul and celebrated Republic Day on Oct. 29 with their new friends from Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School. As a result, a cultural bridge has been built between Stockholm’s suburbs and İstanbul’s Bağcılar district.

Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School has not had an excellent past. The school was founded in 1975 with three classes and seven teachers but was not able to meet the needs of Bağcılar’s ever-growing migrant population. After relocating to a bigger, new building in 1993, the elementary school was badly damaged by the Marmara earthquake in 1999 and was demolished in 2005, when it was understood that the school could not be retrofitted. It was rebuilt in 2006. However, the school building still has problems as it was designed without taking the nearby river into account. The conference hall which has been used in the project was flooded after a heavy rain.

After these unfortunate events, the school’s destiny changed with the appointment of Turkish teacher Yusuf Çopur two years ago. Putting the project into practice with his wife, Kezban Çopur, who also teaches Turkish, the director of the school, Gencer Doğutürk, and the Bağcılar district education chief, Kadir Kuş, Yusuf Çopur has increased the rate of book reading among the school’s students from 10 percent to 87 percent. After the project kicked off, every student in the school read 37 different books in 13 months.

“Bağcılar can be described as one of the suburbs of İstanbul that receives increasing numbers of migrants every year. The socioeconomic status of the students’ families is below the average in Turkey. Developing a love of literature and reading books is, I think, the best way to protect students whose circumstances leave them more vulnerable to picking up bad habits like using heroin and alcohol and committing crimes,” said Çopur. His slogan is “One who is friends with books is an enemy of violence.” This month’s author is Feyza Hepçilingirler, and the teacher’s dream is to host internationally popular Turkish author Yaşar Kemal in the project.

Turkish writers Ali Çolak, Selim İleri and Ahmet Ümit (L to R) participate in a panel discussion with Turkish and Swedish students at the Bağcılar Atatürk Elementary School as part of the EU-funded “I love reading” campaign.

What Swedish students say

Simona Araya: Before my visit to Turkey, I supposed that I was going to a country that had low quality roads, thus, my family was also concerned about my visit. It was not easy to convince them. But the time I have spent in Turkey has been the best part of my life.

Sandra Petterson: It is really a great feeling to meet with an author whose book I have read. It is the first time that I have met an author and had my book signed. I like Selim İleri’s “Gelinlik Kız” (Girl to become a bride), Cemil Kavukçu’s “Ablam” (My elder sister) and Ali Çolak’s “Mavisini Yitirmiş Yaşamak” (A life having lost its blue). I asked the authors what I was wondering about their pieces and shared my opinions with them. Turkey is a country in which very good people live.

Maximillian Wangklev: I experienced the time in Turkey as if I was in a dream. Through the project I have met Turkish author and poets. I appreciated the poems of A. Ali Ural and Haydar Ergülen. After returning to Sweden I will tell people how Turkey is fascinating and beautiful. I have particularly started to be curious about Turkish literature and Turkish poetry.

What authors say

Selim İleri: This project brings hope for a bright future. It is a breath of fresh air that the project has gained an international dimension. Despite my story “Gelinlik Kız” having been included in many anthologies, nobody has ever been able to put elegant questions like these students.

Ahmet Ümit: “I love reading” helps not only Turkish students but also Swedish ones to realize their dreams. The students I met today said it was their first time to come together with a writer. They read passages from “Bab-ı Esrar” (The door of secrets). It is very beautiful that love is the common language of humanity.

Ömer Erdem: I find significant the meeting of the writer and the students who read the books of this writer. Young people who are exposed to books in their early years, I think, become more aware and stronger in life.

Nalan Barbarosoğlu: This project is important as regards helping students to see literature as a part of their life. Both the Turkish students and their Swedish friends prove their love of reading with the deep and skillfully put questions they asked me.

Cemil Kavukçu: The books students are encouraged to read and the interviews with the writers have improved the student’s level of perception. The books I supposed I had written for older readers were examined very carefully by the students, and I felt I was talking to literary critics when I had conversations with the students.

Ali Çolak: I believe this project provides a remarkable contribution to educate the students to become individuals beneficial to society. Swedish students read our books very carefully and took notes the parts they found important.

A. Ali Ural: My experience at Bağcılar school is the biggest compliment in my career as a writer. The students’ interest in poetry affected me. I was impressed when I saw the same level of attention from the Swedish teachers and students. I have never received as many interesting comments on my poems as I did today.

H. Salih Zengin: I have met with students many times, but in this school’s students I observed enormous self confidence and ability for self expression. I think it stems from their reading books and having talks with authors.

Haydar Ergülen: I thank those who realized this project, which brings together a wide range of writers with students curious about literature and Swedish teachers and students with ours under the roof of a love of literature.

Sunay Akın: I will always remember this school. How can I forget these students who love reading so much?

Beşir Ayvazoğlu: “I love reading” is a unique project which prepares students for the future. It is even possible to imagine a generation having gained the reading habit — it’s very exciting. I am very happy to meet these careful little readers.

Fatih Erdoğan: The event is excellent in terms of giving children access to books and their authors. Today we talked about literature, books and life with both Turkish and Swedish students.

Ayşe Kulin: I encountered bright eyes here. I am very pleased to come together with my little readers.

Ingelin Angerborn: A bewitching atmosphere. I had never thought that “Fortune Star” [her book] would be appreciated so much. The students asked very good, smart questions. Their words are bigger than their ages.

Ulf Nilsson: I do not remember any other time when I have kissed so many kids. I hugged all of them. They read my book carefully. I am very happy.

It was just such a question that outed this infected Minnesota pig in the first place, said Jeff Bender, a scientist working on the pig-testing project at the fair. He directs the U of M’s Center for Animal Health and Food Safety.

Bender and his Minnesota colleagues were collaborating with their counterparts at the University of Iowa in a study of influenza viruses at the human-pig interface. The purpose of the study funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was to better understand flu viruses for the benefit of humans and pigs alike.

“We were trying to understand how these viruses can move between species and to characterize that better,” Bender said.

One setting chosen for the research was fairs, where so many animals and people mingle.

This was not part of the massive global dragnet operation for the H1N1 virus. The first round of testing started last year before the outbreak of the aggressive new flu. Researchers performed DNA analysis on nasal swabs taken from pigs at the fair. They were looking for influenza. They found nothing.

This year, though, three of 103 pigs that were sampled came up positive on a preliminary test of swabs taken between Aug. 26 and Sept. 1. And one of the three did, indeed, prove to have the H1N1 virus.

The pigs showed no symptoms, Bender said.

“They were not sick at all,” he said.

Crossing species barriers
Experts were neither alarmed nor surprised by the finding. The infection already had been discovered in swine herds in Canada, Norway, the U.K., Argentina and several other places.

Further, it has long been known that pigs, birds and people can pass some types of influenza across species barriers.

When an influenza virus invades a body, it tries to bind with receptors – specific molecular components of the body’s cells. Once bound, the bug has a more secure platform to do its mischief in a body.

Some receptors are very similar in pigs, birds and people, said Joni Scheftel, the state public health veterinarian at the Minnesota Department of Health. So it stands to reason the virus has a better chance of leaping back and forth among those species.

Not so with our most common domestic pets.

“It does not appear that dogs and cats are susceptible,” Scheftel said.

The same is true with horses. Equine influenza infects donkeys, horses and mules but not the people who work with them. It follows that horses are not likely to catch H1N1 influenza. They lack the appropriate receptors.

A pet bird? “We just don’t know,” Scheftel said.

And while the craze for taking Vietnamese potbelly pigs as pets seems to have passed, anyone still keeping one of them might want to watch for symptoms.

By far though, the greatest influenza risk we face comes from other people, rather than from pigs or any other animal, Scheftel said.

Mixing vessels for viruses
Crossing the species barrier is not that easy.

When it happens, though, there is one real concern. Many experts consider pigs to be a “mixing vessel” for viruses because they have receptors that can accept avian and swine flu viruses. Some say humans could be mixing vessels, too.

The “mixing” can come when a cell is infected by two similar influenza viruses. Let’s say one invader in a pig is the H1N1 virus and the other is a different flu virus not yet found in humans. RNA swaps happen. And various combinations of the original invaders can be assembled into a new virus.

In other words, H1N1 could pick up some new RNA in pig cells then come back to infect humans in a new and different form that could be more virulent than the influenza virus now circulating. Of course, it also could be less so.

The same scenario could play out in birds. It’s a reason poultry workers are urged to get flu shots and to take other precautions. Health authorities want to minimize any chances that avian and human flu viruses could combine to create new bugs.

The finding of H1N1 in the State Fair pig serves as a reminder that the same safety precautions should be taken with pigs, said Bender at the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety. People who work with swine should get flu shots, stay home when they are sick and be especially vigilant about hand washing and other sanitation.

It also may be time to develop a hog vaccine for the virus, Bender said.

But there is no reason at this point to panic – no evidence in other countries where H1N1 jumped from humans to pigs that dangerous new viruses are jumping back. When pigs do catch the flu, they typically cough, run a fever and then recover after a few days, Bender said.

Facts, logic and fear
The facts are one thing. But the public’s understanding of the flu epidemic can be quite another.

We’ve insisted on calling this bug “swine flu,” even though the H1N1 influenza virus shares elements from birds, humans and pigs.

Even less logical is the rush to reject pork in many countries around the world, despite solid scientific evidence that there is no way anyone could catch the flu by eating meat.

So it’s not surprising that the fear instilled by the State Fair pig is largely for Minnesota’s pork industry. It is a $2 billion-a-year enterprise contributing 21,500 jobs to the state’s economy, says the Minnesota Pork Board.

And the industry already was hurting before this latest news emerged.

In his announcement on Monday, Vilsack reached hard to reassure the pork industry’s overseas markets: “We have fully engaged our trading partners to remind them that several international organizations, including the World Organization for Animal Health, have advised that there is no scientific basis to restrict trade in pork and pork products,” Vilsack said.

“People cannot get this flu from eating pork or pork products. Pork is safe to eat,” he stressed.

Vilsack also said that the finding does not suggest commercial herds are infected. He said that show pigs and commercially raised pigs are in separate segments of the swine industry. (I wonder about that observation because I interviewed many pig farmers at the State Fair for a different MinnPost story, and they were very much interested in selling their pigs commercially.)

Meanwhile, Vislack also reminded swine producers that they need to take extra care with good hygiene and biosecurity in order to prevent the introduction and spread of influenza viruses in their herds. He encouraged them to participate in a USDA swine influenza virus surveillance program.

As the high-stakes battle over health care escalates in Congress, Minnesota’s medical industry is pouring millions into lobbying with Medtronic and United Health Group alone spending more than $6.7 million this year to make their case to lawmakers.

“Medtronic is gangbusters for lobbying,” said Dave Levinthal, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics.

The medical device manufacturer spent $3.2 million on lobbying this year and United Health paid out more than $3.5 million as Congress considers sweeping changes in the nation’s health-care system.

According to newly filed documents, Medronic  funneled $962,000 toward lobbying in just the third quarter of 2009, which runs from the beginning of July through the end of September. It spent about $2.3 million during the first two quarters.

“[In the first two quarters] that puts them at number one for companies that have lobbied on behalf of the medical device industry,” Levinthal said.

Medtronic — Minnesota’s 10th largest company by revenue and 18th largest employer – isn’t the only medical device maker spending money on lobbying. It is joined by St. Jude Medical of Minnesota and Boston Scientific, which is based in Massachusetts but employs more than 5,000 workers in Minnesota, making it the state’s 28th largest employer.

In the first six months of this year, St. Jude Medical spent $250,000 and Boston Scientific  $930,000 for lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In the third quarter of this year, Boston Scientific spent another $480,000 on lobbying — up from $410,000 in the third quarter of 2008.

Although United Health and Medtronic are on par with what they spent on lobbying during the first three quarters of 2008, the Center for Responsive Politics found that many of the big spenders in the health sector, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Pfizer, increased their lobbying efforts significantly in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the second quarter of 2008. (The center has not yet analyzed and compared third quarter reports.)