David Berreby
Author, Us and Them: The Science of Identity
David Berreby is the author of "Us and Them: The Science of Identity." He has written about human behavior and other science topics for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Smithsonian, The New Republic, Nature, Discover, Vogue and many other publications. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Paris, a Science Writing Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory, a resident at Yaddo, and in 2006 was awarded the Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship for the first edition of "Us and Them." David can be found on Twitter at @davidberreby and reached by email at david [at] davidberreby [dot] com.
A couple of hours after my last post about the battle over ebooks pricing, word emerged that Amazon and Macmillan had ended their feud. The day before, another giant publisher, […]
Now that Amazon has shown it can and will cut off access to its stock of books whenever it pleases, the Authors Guild has created this tool for writers. Register […]
“This too, shall pass.” Folk tales say this was engraved on a ring given to King Solomon, who had demanded a gift that would make him sad when he was […]
Ornithologists have long connected with “citizen scientists” to gather data on bird populations and behavior. Now the Science for Citizens project has come up with a similar strategy for botany: […]
I buy books. I also have written a book. So I have a more-than-idle interest in this week’s giant-monster fight over ebooks, which pitted Amazon against the big publisher Macmillan […]
failin.gs is a site where you can "create a profile and invite people to leave anonymous constructive criticism about your character." I'm curious. Who thinks this is a good idea? And why?
Science is full of surprises. Like penicillin. And X-rays. And LSD. And the cosmic background radiation that is our best evidence for the “Big Bang” origin of the universe. Ever […]
The American Museum of Natural History has produced a handy video map of the entire known universe, all to scale. Hypnotically fascinating (it’s a reminder, for one thing, that over […]
They’d make an odd dinner party: The 12th century polymath Saint Hildegard of Bingen; James Doohan (aka Scotty from Star Trek); an American sociologist named James Cooke Brown; J.R.R. Tolkien; […]
Royal Caribbean International is continuing to dock its luxury cruise ships on the beaches near Labadee in Haiti, near the epicenter of the earthquake. Some passengers are queasy about this. […]
If you’re worried about Google tracking everything you do with its services, then you should know about Moxie Marlinspike‘s new Firefox add-on, Googlesharing. And if you aren’t worried, maybe you […]
Embryonic stem cells can transform themselves into any kind of cell, including neurons. But neurons made out of stem cells won’t be much use if, after implantation, they don’t connect […]
I have nothing against the development of sex robots. They’re a logical next step in the history of technology’s application to sexual desire. No doubt they will be a great […]
About 50,000 years ago, on the Mediterranean coast of what is now Spain, somebody (or bodies) was keeping carefully ground-up pigments–red, yellow, orange and shiny black–in neatly pierced seashells. That’s […]
Do you want to help suffering Haitians, but find yourself hesitating, because someone might thank God for your good deed? I didn’t think so, but the Richard Dawkins Foundation has […]
There has been some pushback about that Nature paper which claimed there’s a power-law “signal” in the seemingly random events of guerrilla wars against standing armies. They really don’t like […]
Ron Bluntschli, an American who works with Haitian farmers through the organization Beyond Borders, told me this story years ago: “When I lived in the country there was a family […]
A new study finds doctors who are stressed and tired treat their patients more mechanistically–prescribing pills, tests and other technical fixes instead of taking the time to see people as […]
From anthropological records around the world, you could easily make a case that marriage ties make people more likely to fight.
If modern medicine is simply the application of universal scientific knowledge to human bodies, then treatments for the same physical problems should be roughly similar all over the world. Instead, […]
Jury selection starts this week in the trial of Scott Roeder, who has confessed to the assassination last May of George Tiller, a doctor vilified by pro-lifers for performing late-term […]
Plastic Logic finally released its much-anticipated QUE reader today, along with news of agreements that a forest full of books, magazines and newspapers will be available on the device. The […]
Pakistan’s Chief Justice has ordered the government to recognize a third gender, so that the nation’s 80,000-300,000 hijras may fully exercise their civil rights. Hijra is a term from a […]
Warfare’s effect and risk is unique to the person. Populations face war as individuals.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying blow up Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit, is in many ways the very model of a modern terrorist. Like many al-Qaeda […]
More cuddly holiday season news: According to two architects who specialize in sustainable-living solutions, it takes twice as much land-use in a year to keep a medium-sized dog fed as […]
Just in time for the holidays comes a study that says loneliness spreads like a disease through people’s social networks. In other words, that sad, isolated feeling is contagious. It’s […]
Didn’t see this one coming: I thought Shiites were attracted to Hezbollah for its fight against Israel, or its aura of piety, or its social welfare programs. Didn’t know that, […]
The U.S. Senate passed the health-care overhaul this morning, which means there’s probably only one very risky step left before some sort of reform becomes law: reconciliation of the House […]
Some time in the early 1960s, the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot was asked by a university librarian to give his advice about some dusty journals no one consulted—should they be thrown […]