Barthes/Chancel

Moi je préfère bien entendu de beaucoup l’écriture à la parole. La parole me gêne, parce que j’ai toujours peur de me théatraliser quand je parle, j’ai peur du théâtre, j’ai peur de ce qu’on appelle l’hystérie, j’ai peur en parlant de me trouver entrainé à des coups d’oeil complices, à des clins d’oeil,

à des concessions

Non pas vraiment à des concessions mais à des, comment dirais-je, à des séductions plus ou moin complaisantes, et j’ai peur de la parole, voyez vous, mais d’autre part bien sûr dans la vie actuelle il faut accepter la parole, il faut savour jouer le jeu.
Roland Barthes in interview with Jacques Chancel, Radioscopie, 1975, part 2, 12:19, here

homo sacer

Homo sacer (Latin for “the sacred man”) is an obscure figure of Roman law: a person who is banned, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. The person is excluded from all civil rights, while his/her life is deemed “holy” in a negative sense.

the child’s guide to incentives

Tyler Cowen’s Discover Your Inner Economist has come. It may be that its superficial level of analysis was thought appropriate to a general audience.

To take an example, Cowen comments briefly on the use of financial incentives to reward students for good grades:

Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard, decided to conduct an experiment and pay students for better grades. A new pilot program will reward schoolchildren if they do well on reading and math exame throughout the school year. A score of 80, for instance, would receive a $20 bonus, with further payments for later improvements. Fryer remarked to a reporter: “There are people who are worried about giving kids extra incentives for something that they should be intrinsically able to do…I understand that, but there is a huge achievement gap in this country, and we have to be proactive.”