"after I get neurons figured out" 
 
You mean that they're already figured out & you just want to increase your knowledge of them, or are you actually a scientist about to make a landmark discovery/ies? 
 
Anyway, i hope that you can tell us what neurons do that is *subjective* as well as objective & readily observed in the lab.  
 
Observing how neurons function is only part of the story, imho.  
I want you to translate the *objectivity* you experience in the lab when observing neurons from the outside to the *subjectivity* you experience when you *think* about, & with, them.  
 
We can both view the same thing, but we're viewing from different brains. Very *subjective* there, i think.

Michael Blowhard: "a story generating, story-craving, story-understanding" 
 
Ok, then, if everything's a story, i guess i'm just very selective about what kind of "story" i like. Most story is irrelevant to me, or so i believe. 
 
"they're how the mind operates" 
 
How much academic esteem has this interpretation won?

"If a good storyteller was in town, you hurried over to hear him" 
 
I don't know what's wrong with me, but i don't feel that id be rushing across the village to hear the storyteller. I like facts, data, not stories or fiction. I have never read a work of fiction in my life. As it happens i really don't like reading anything all that much, not even stuff that interests me; i just like the data, facts that i get from via reading. Reading isn't a pleasurable activity to me, whereas absorbing fact & interesting data is. I know; there's a little conflict there. 
But reading, or stories, in themselves, are nothing to me, if not botherseome.  
 
Oh, btw, i don't watch movies & have never seen the inside of a theater.

"The press will go after politicians and businessmen" 
 
I suspect that the press is run, controlled, or heavily influenced by these same politicians & businessmen.  
 
I doubt that a certain publication would employ some journalist whose views ran contrarian to the general views of the publication. Businessmen with big business motivations stand to lose if they employ journalists whose views run contrary to theirs, & whose exposure of certain things the periodical company doesn't want known about would stand to hurt businessmen & loyal readership interests alike, i think.  
 
I've always wondered: how do you police policemen, police the officials who police policemen, ad infinitum, & so on. Goverment can't be trusted, period. No government, of any sort. Checks & balances my ass. The pres & pentagon do as they want. 
 
"Within three decades nanotechnology could allow small groups to manufacture nuclear weapons" 
 
If that be the case, i think the whole DNA database issue would be the least of our problems. 
 
If this possibility does become a reality, we're all doomed, period. Also nano-bio-weapons. There goes the human race.

Wow, this would be symbolic, the ultimate token of trust & faith in authority & government. To be, the gov needs to police big business, not individuals. But according to a BBC report i heard recently, it really works the other way, with white collar crimes by big business taken less seriously than some kid smoking a marijuana blunt in the street. Crook-crony polititians & businessmen(sometimes the same people) obviously have one another's backs. But neither polititians or businessmen have the back of the kid smoking a joint in the street. IIRC, there's even what is called a prison industrial complex here in the U.S., where crime means profit for some. DNA database, in a corporocracy? 
 
Lets see how long before the sheep agree to something like this. 
 
I.]If there is selective access, the currupt will delight in that. 
 
II.] If the database were non-anonymized & access-free to public, what are the possible consequences, unfavorable if any? 
I can imagine that any mischief made this way would have to be the work of high-IQ techies.

Who do Native Americans find the use of that appelation offensive, or so i've heard/read? 
 
It annoys me that they'd prefer to be called "Indians". They aren't "Indians" & don't have even the remotest connection with Indians or India. 
Do they love Columbus' mistake or something?

"Nomadism seems to occupy a "happy" martial medium between the hunter-gathering lifestyle and settled farming" 
 
*Happy* indeed. Can you imagine the thrill/rush that those wicked steppe nomads found in sacking the civilized & in generally looting from the more settled & peacefully inclined. Disdain for the civil city life was their attitude. 
 
If you were going to be a nomad, being martial was certainly a big help, if not survival. Of course, they didn't have to be have as slaughterously machiavellian as they tended to, but men have inclinations, desires & aspirations, i guess. 
 
I can probably imagine the bride-stealing, rape & wanton butchery that came with conquest. The scary mongols would dispatch any man(young or old) in sight when they set out on their bloodthirsty expeditions. 
 
Some guy(on the net) once said that it is every mans' dream to be like the 'Great Khans'. 
 
btw, aren't there numerous ancient citadels in the afghan-central asian region. Hmmmm.. ..wonder what the danger was? 
 
Oh, those naughty steppe tribes!

Matthew,  
 
thanks for that:)

Matthew, 
 
Yes, the Libet experiments reveal something very odd about us. He's one of the main guys who sparked my interest in these issues. 
 
There's something reciprocal about the working of the nervous system. These reciprocal/volitional/causation type problems are especially intriguing to me. 
 
I remember watching a program in which people were having there brain's scanned while asked to, say, decide to lift a finger. 
 
What they found was truly spooky.  
 
"...300 to 500 milliseconds before.. " 
Yes, it was the kind of spookiness revealed in that excerpt. 
 
"human nervous system responds in advance to event that occur" 
 
I'm also assuming that non-human animals would show something similar. Is it a fair bet?

Last time i visited my psychotherapist(who gives me med. prescriptions) i told him that i thought that there's something spooky going on with the mind, specifically that we don't will our thoughts & that i was curious since, if we don't will our thought, where's it all coming from. It's like we're robots or something. You know the kind of discussion, that mental volition stuff. I wondered & wanted to know if this might be like an infinite regress type thing. 
 
Anyway, the exchange ended with him confessing that he thought, like Fly does, that "me" and "ego" are illusions of some sort. This guy studied the philosophy of mind too. 
He also spoke of something like an "illusion generator", but i unfortunately started losing him at that point.  
 
It's complicated & fascinating stuff, truly:)

Thanks for clarifying that for me, David B:)

IN an article by Dalrymple titled "The Frivolity of Evil", apparently about his work, crimes & what he sees as the decay of virtue & prevailing of wickedness(i didn't read the whole thing) he mentions: 
 
"With 40 percent of children in Britain born out of wedlock, and the proportion still rising, and with divorce the norm rather than the exception" 
 
These are interesting figures, & new to me. Would anyone here know is this 40 percent is primarily low in IQ & SES? 
 
I don't know the stats, so how do those figures compare to the situation in the US of A?

Prairie Mary .. .. :-)

Prairie Mary, 
 
Nice ethnographic bit there, lol. Are these Papuans you're talking about?

ogunsiron, 
 
i'm with you on the legs & the voluptous women. Can't stand skinny/bony legs.

Some neuroendocrinology* - *Has it even been clarified yet as to whether the Basal or Reciprocal models for testosterone levels are correct?  
 
We know that changes in mood can widely temporarily alter hormone levels but also that hormone levels can affect mood. I am not aware of the clarification for this as yet. 
 
In other matters, it would seem to me that 'hypermasculine' men are actually very *low* in fitness . Consider this: high androgen levels have been found to correlate positively with blue collar occupational employment or otherwise with unemployment. These factors, in turn, correlate postively with low SES and with low cognitive ability ( feeblemindedness and low IQ). In other words, 'hypermasculine' men are the very men that we'd expect to compose the *scum-class* that infest our communities in ever growing degrees. These so-called 'hypermasculine' men are the ones who generally forfiet their lives early, either in cemetaries or in criminal justice institutions. There is *no* fitness to the dysgenic rubbish that constitute this element.

Still nothing new here really. Just the same ol' evo-jumbo. 
The point, it seems to me, is that men have been inclined towards female faces that are lacking in any hint of virilization, with a preference for paedomorphy, which further contrasts with virilization. They have selected for females with these features as a result of an inherent revulsion towards indications of virility or dominance. Men have evolved to perceive virilization as the mark of the competitor and it's absence as the trophy. Virility in the female is a turn-off precisely because it is inherently associated with competition for it's opposite. Paedomorphy and a total absence of virilization would serve to indicate that one would comply rather than vie. Of course, and it makes perfect sense to me, a female with the pronounced facial and bodily hallmarks(i.e., virility) of the much unappreciated 'competitor sex' would be repugnant. "Beauty" or "sexiness" isn't mysterious at all; it is the absence of all traits in the trophy sex that are associated with the competitor sex. 
 
I would further assume that the female would generally find pronounced estrogenic/paedomorphic characteristics in males to be off-putting, for identical purposes. These are the great signals of difference that clarify identity and roles.  
IMO, evopsych is needlessly complicated, with many answers right under our noses.

*Both* are equally edible and eligable!! 
 
By the way, where can i access analagous studies for males? Men have an androgen/estrogen balance which could be associated with differing features as the ratios shifted. What relates to male facial attractiveness?

"African americans commit alot of crime and they are not short, no?" 
 
Well, no, they aren't 'short', but they still seem considerably smaller than rural caucasian men. I can't remember where, but i have seen some data to support this. 
 
[offer data, or your assertions will be deleted. FYI, 2 seconds of google, Average height and weight charts. last chance. -razib]

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"...'hardwired' into our brains due to our species being predominantly a hunter- gatherer type for most of our time on earth." 
 
Yes. I suspect that that the tallest would have made the best hunter-protectors, and that the best hunter-protectors would also have been the brightest. I further suspect that an IQ-height correlation has been with us from time immemorial.  
 
The stocky, vile and feebleminded material they now call 'gangbangsters' would hardly last a week in a hunter-protector lifestyle.

Why does the study fail to mention the important social/ethnic differences that height relates to?  
 
Those of low SES vary considerably from the mid and upper classmen in height, IQ and a host of other vital parameters. Therefore, it is less than a wonder that the short[i.e. mostly low SES, low IQ] commit suicide at much higher rates. Indeed, these people die by all violence at far higher rates even factoring out suicide.  
 
By the way, these "poor" shorties are also the people responsible for our high urban crime rates, but leave it to the super-libs to find a sociological explanation(justification?) for the "misbehavior". 
 
So, aside from the occasional pituitary dwarfism, the short probably overwhelmingly come from low SES, low IQ backrounds. An obvious culprit would appear to be nutrition, but, as far as is currently visible, the lowest SES groups appear to be the most rotund and well fed. Even the babies tend to be chubby. You just don't see the obesity in those gated communities.