Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Digital Currency: ten years before Bitcoin, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon

Sci-fi writers are supposed to be ahead of their time, but this is ridiculous! From Neal Stephenson's 1999 Cryptonomicon

 

"We are going to launch our own currency.” By saying this, Randy is divulging proprietary information to someone not authorized to hear it. But he does it anyway, because opening himself up to Amy in this way, making himself vulnerable to her, gives him a hard-on.

“How do you go about that? Don’t you have to be a government?”

An Angiogram that costs 2430 USD in the USA costs only 264 USD in France

 

source: International Federation of Health Plans (USA costs a range due to price variability)

 

From "21 graphs that show America’s health-care prices are ludicrous" in Wonkblog by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post

 See also:

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are KillinAmg Us, by Steven Brill in Time

Why an MRI costs 1080 USD in American and only 280 USD in France by Ezra Klein on Wonkblog

Could the French Carte Vitale save America billions?

Jessica McCann, author of All Different Kinds of Free, on being sold into slavery

I first met Jessica McCann, the author of All Different Kinds of Free, in Tempe, Arizona at the excellent Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference which brought together talented writers in fiction, non-fiction, mystery, YA, childrens and sci-fi  to name but a few. After a passionate chat about her  (true) story of a freeborn black woman kidnapped into slavery,  I knew I had to interview her.  Winner of the Freedom in Fiction Prize with nearly 100 five star reviews on Amazon,  All Different Kinds of Free is Jessica's debut novel.

Happy to be back in Paris!

 

Sure, snowbirds prance around in shorts and sunglasses in my native Arizona, but truly can anything compare to the humid, yet fashionable, snow monkeys of Paris?*

Paris Literary Events, Readings and Workshops March 2013

This month, news from Marilyn Hacker, Douglas Kennedy, Harriet Rochefort, Cécile David-Weill, Alfred Corn, Jennifer K. Dick, Will Inrig, Kate Noakes, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Dot Devota, Brandon Shimoda, Zachary Schomburg,  Jenny Colgan , Roger Hoeberichts, Roderick Ford,  Angela Bartie, Eleanor Bell, John Calder, Jim Haynes, Kate Stables, Lauren Elkin, Joanna Walsh,John Baxter, Victoria Zackheim, Thomas Gatus, Stephen Dau, Anne Marsella, Rosa Rankin-Gee, Gerald Fleming, Jeffrey Green, Harriet Lye, William Powers, and the Young Authors Fiction Festival. (update in progress, more to follow)