Pyramids and Networks

December 16, 2008 in capturing, invading, socializing, testing
Tags: cuñado, Madoff, spain

The collapse of Bernard (Bernie to his friends) Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is exposing some interesting networks in the world of investment and philanthropy. Not only did the scam spread through word of mouth and country club contacts, but apparently a large part of the appeal of the scheme was in its apparent exclusivity. “Dealing with [...]

Thirty Thousands

December 15, 2008 in capturing, counting, objecting, quantifying
Tags: cimade, deportations, france, hortefeux, immigration, lolf, performance, police, sarkozy, statistics

Readers interested in the fate of quantified performance can have a look here at the performance targets which accompany the 2009 budget for the French Ministry of Immigration and National Identity (a gem of Sarkozy’s France, already blogged about here). The number of actual deportations (“nombre de mesures de reconduites effectives à la [...]

Death of a Market Researcher

December 7, 2008 in capturing, economizing
Tags: harry henry, market research, punch cards, yellow pages

Brief and amazing obituary of market research pioneer Harry Henry in this week’s Financial Times. Here are some of Mr Henry’s multiple achievements:
“In 1949, he was the first to use a punch-card system to work out how the country was covered by the press…”
“Mr Henry invented methods of calculating the time people spent looking at [...]

Social Science ‘Discovers’ Literature

December 6, 2008 in capturing, explaining, printing, socializing
Tags: africa, development, Egypt, literature, lse, novels, social science

A recent LSE report holds up literature as an untapped form of sociological or “development knowledge,” one that can succeed at assessing and capturing development issues “better” than policy research. The title makes a claim for the utility of literature in ameliorating the “crisis of representation in development research”: “The Fiction of Development: Literary [...]

Do It Yourself

December 4, 2008 in capitalizing, explaining, socializing
Tags: finance, funds, hedging, investment, lrb, mackenzie, mayfair, money, sociology

Useful: in the last issue of the London Review of Books, there are some really good tips on how to start a hedge fund.

ANT Sociality

December 3, 2008 in naming, testing
Tags: ant, ants, colony, invasion, latour, rehabilitation, sex, sociologics

Latour’s rehabilitation of the title ‘actor-network theory’ (including the hyphen) points to the parallels between the acronym ANT, the English word for the insect ‘ant’, and the work of those using ANT that resembles (or should resemble) the activities of ants. Whether one is favourably or negatively predisposed towards ANT and/or Latour, it is understandable [...]

Doing Science in TV Format

December 1, 2008 in testing

With the rise of ethical regulations for research involving ‘human subjects’, the tradition of social scientific inquiry that relied on deception and the ‘psychologically exploitive’ manipulation of participants came to an end. Or, rather, it was transplated into reality television. Stanley Milgram would have a hard time today getting his experimental protocols past his university’s [...]