Characteristically lucid review in the LRB by John Lanchester of Nick Davies’s book, Flat Earth News.

‘Important’ is a cant word in book reviewing: it usually means something like ‘slightly above average’, or ‘I was at university with her,’ or ‘I couldn’t be bothered to read it so I’m giving a quote instead.’ Very occasionally it might be stretched to mean ‘a book likely to be referred to in the future by other people who write about the same subject’. Nick Davies’s Flat Earth News, however, is a genuinely important book, one which is likely to change, permanently, the way anyone who reads it looks at the British newspaper industry. Davies’s book explains something easy to notice and complain about but hard to understand: the sense of the increasing thinness and attenuation of the British press. It’s not literal thinness: the papers, physically, are bigger than ever. There just seems to be less in them than there once was: less news, less thought (as opposed to opinion), less density of engagement, less time spent finding things out. Davies looks into all those questions, confirms that the impression of thinness is correct, explains how this came about, and offers no hope that things will improve…

Gosh! ‘Kirsten’, the lady Eliot Spitzer was allegedly communing with in a fancy New York hotel, is — according to the New York Times — named Ashley Alexandra Dupré. What’s really surprising though is that her MySpace page is still up and active (or at any rate was at 11:10 on March 13).

I am all about my music, and my music is all about me… It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel. I live in New York and am on top of the world. Been here since 2004 and I love this city, I love my life here. But, my path has not been easy. When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I’ve never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music. It started when I moved in with a musician during my odyssey to New York. One day, I was in the shower singing “respect.” He and his lead guitarist burst in, had me repeat it and it started. We wrote, rehearsed and toured. After recording a bit with them, I decided to move to Manhattan to pursue my music career. I spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry. Now, it’s all about my music. It’s all about expressing me. I can sit here now, and knowingly tell you that life’s hard sometimes. But, I made it. I’m still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché, yes, but I know it’s true. I have experienced just how hard it can be. I can honestly tell you to never dwell on the past, but build from it and keep moving forward. Don’t let anyone hold you back or tell you that you can’t…because you can. I didn’t and here I am, just listen to it…. What we Want is my latest track. It’s really about trust, something my past has made very difficult for me to feel. This one was inspired by a guy, who taught me not to confuse my dreams with the sounds of the city…I hope you like it.

Good for her. She has 1,805 friends (excluding Eliot) and lists her ‘influences’ as:

My Brother, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, Frank Sinatra, Patsy Cline, Carly Simon, Diana Krall, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Aerosmith, Lauryn Hill, Keisha Cole, U2, Jack Johnson, Vivian Green

There’s also a recording of one of her songs on her page. She’s no Ella Fitzgerald. But the opening lines are intriguing, given what we now know:

I know what you want
You know what I want
I know what you need
Can you handle me?

Hmmm…

Interesting story in today’s New York Times…

To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart.

The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.

They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory.

The researchers said they had also been able to glean personal patient data by eavesdropping on signals from the tiny wireless radio that Medtronic, the device’s maker, had embedded in the implant as a way to let doctors monitor and adjust it without surgery…

I wonder if this will — as Good Morning Silicon Valley suggests — persuade the US Secret Service to wrap Dick Cheney in kitchen foil?

The FT’s John Gapper has been following up on the Eliot Spitzer story.

The Emperors Club VIP was clearly at the top end of prostitution enterprises. It operated across borders – in Paris and London as well as in US cities – and it was very expensive. Clients had to pay between $1,000 and $5,500 per hour for its services.

Like other service businesses, it had a loyalty club for the most elite clients who paid even more than $5,500 per hour, known as the Icon Club. It allowed some clients to “buy out” their favourite prostitutes, permitting the men direct access to the women without going through the Emperors Club.

The 47-page complaint shows the Emperors Club also faced many operating challenges. The federal wiretaps of conversations show the organisers facing problems such as having too few prostitutes for the demand from clients in one city and having to hassle clients to pay their bills.

One problem was to get the prostitutes to get correct imprints of the clients’ American Express cards. The complaint states that one of the organisers asked another:

“To ask the prostitutes to fax the imprints, or if that did not work, to scan them and email the imprints and then send the originals in the event of a dispute with the clients about the charge, or if American Express inquired.”

Wonder how many corporate wives will now look askance at their husband’s Amex accounts?

… in 1985, Konstantin Chernenko, who had been Soviet leader for just 13 months, died at age 73. His death was announced on March 11th. Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen to succeed him. I had completely airbrushed ol’ Chernenko from my memory — which is perhaps understandable when you see his official portrait (above), which makes him look like a triumph of the embalmer’s art.

P.G. Wodehouse’s shrewd observation that a strong interest in religion is invariably a prelude to insanity is brought to mind by the news that Tony Blair is to ‘teach’ at Yale. Here’s the announcement:

New Haven, Conn. — Yale University is pleased to announce the appointment of Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Howland Distinguished Fellow for the next academic year.

Mr. Blair will lead a seminar at Yale and participate in a number of events around the campus. The course in which he will participate with Yale faculty will examine issues of faith and globalization. His efforts at Yale relate to the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that he will be launching later this year.

The Deans of the Yale School of Management and Divinity are working with Mr. Blair on finalizing details of the program….

If you take that last sentence literally, it would seem that Yale has a School of Management and Divinity, but then I suppose the poor dears were so excited they hardly noticed what they’d written.

Coincidentally, George W. Bush is an alumnus of Yale (where he spent many happy days under the table). Perhaps he will be a Distinguished Guest Lecturer in Professor Blair’s seminar programme? Truly, you couldn’t make this up. What hope have comedians when reality doles out developments like this?