Two years ago the FT ran a big series called 'The Future of Capitalism'. Now its running a series of articles under the more apocalyptic rubric of  'Capitalism in Crisis'. Since Christmas there have been more or less weighty contributions by a series of more or less substantial contributors including such FT regulars as Phillip Stevens, Andrew Hill and Martin Wolf, with guest spots by the great and the good including such luminaries as Ed  Miliband, Jeffrey Sachs...

Interesting, isn't it, how drawing gets itself marginalised. Andrew Hill makes the point nicely.

But perhaps it is that social scientists trade in words too much. Perhaps they tend to exclude drawings. I make this suggestion because engineers and scientists endlessly draw, sketch, and draft, when they are talking. There seems to be an essential visual component to such shop talk. Indeed, they joke about drawing on tablecloths in cafes over lunch (paper cloths are better than...

Here’s the conundrum: when do we actually make decisions? And when do we not? Did you decide to brush your teeth this morning? Or did it just happen?

Speaking for myself, I sometimes make decisions. Sometimes I don’t make decisions, and I ought to. ‘Come on’, they say, ‘make up your mind.’ But most of the time I find that life is more like brushing your teeth. It happens. Things unfold. They go on. Decisions don’t seem to be relevant to it one way or the other. So what to...

Filling in the 2011 census last week made me wonder about the pitfalls that census data creates for future analytical work. I was struck in particular by how the census creates categories of anomalous persons from what are, in practice, quite mainstream social positionings. I’ve noticed one such case because it cuts across my mundane knowledge of British teenage life - others will doubtless have found other points in the form filling where they knew that their answers were no longer...

How well – or badly – do academics write?

In today’s Observer Nick Cohen says that we write pretty badly. In particular, we mostly fail to write in ways that communicate well with non-academic citizens. And this, he says, is crucially important at a moment when the government has removed state support from university social science and humanities courses in the UK. “...

The release of embassy cables consisting of some 251,287 dispatches from more than 250 worldwide US embassies and consulates the WikiLeaks, has led to the declaration of the first global cyberwar.  As Julian Assange is held in solitary confinement at Wandsworth prison, hackivists are mounting attacks on those who have targeted WikiLeaks, from credit card firms to online companies.

It is instructive that the government policy of...