Creating hybrids involves crossing to varietals to produce a third varietal, hoping for an improvement. It would be expected for the new strain to have characteristics that combine those of the two parents in some way, but it's not guaranteed.
Now, we put that on steroids. I would expect a random mish-mash of new characteristics along with some or all of the characteristics of the parents. That's what the steroids analogy does for me.

Genetic modification, in contrast, usually involves isolating the gene sequence for a specific trait that is desired in the new strain, then splicing the genes into an existing genome. Much more precise.

I propose a different analogy: if hybridization efforts were surgery, they would be done with a spoon. GM would then be like SURGERY WITH A SCALPEL!!! Horrors.

I was hoping for facial recognition of the actors that appear on television. It would save a lot of time flipping through the channels; imagine being able to tell your TV which actors (or newscasters) you enjoy watching and have all their televised appearances recorded for you, even uncredited cameos. You could get Star Trek, TJ Hooker, Boston Legal and Priceline commercials with one request! Utopia!

Scroll down to the bottom. The last picture resembles a lifeform. The speech bubble clinches it: "Destroy Dan Dare!"

I forgot my combo wall/car charger in a hotel, you insensitive clod!

How(ie) Long is a former football player for the Raiders and current commentator for Fox Sports. He doesn't look Chinese at all. In fact, his Wikipedia entry says he was born in Massachusetts.

Are you referring to someone else?

Actually, based on demand for the story, she has no moral right to leave it unwritten. The courts should compel her to write the next sequel!

I think there was such a contract (not moral, but contractual) on The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, between his stints as Prince and as Prince. Seems his albums started sucking around that time...

Yes. If you are interested, this book has more info on the concept.

Let me guess...this 'friend' is really you?

I once had a friend who evaded the cops by extinguishing his lights during night pursuits. I -- uh, he(!) -- has yet to die from a shootout, though.

So it doesn't sound like it's going to solve our energy crisis by giving us a lot of kinetic energy that we don't have already. Er, I mean 'end' our energy crisis.

Seriously, though, it intuitively seems like the danger from rogue asteroids comes from an intersecting orbit, with a high closure velocity prior to impact. This one may cause problems if it enters our atmosphere, but if it's already in a similar orbit, the energy dissipated would be mainly that associated with falling into our gravity well. How much energy is needed to cause Armageddon in this manner? (As distinct from the LHC manner of Armageddon, which seems more efficient, in theory...)

It's all laid out by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (accents omitted for Slashdot) in his book.

If you are interested, there's also information about elephant-eating snakes...

A recent episode of SVU had them determine that a Jane Doe had been to Ukraine 6 months ago because of the levels and proportions of some isotope in her hair. You see, the water in Ukraine has a particular isotope signature, so by analyzing the hair the cops could determine that she'd been there. That led to a Ukrainian pimp, who, for a deportation in lieu of US prison, gave them the identity of the girl. Isotopes. Huh...

Often when I get into intractable arguments like this, it turns out in the end that the disagreement boils down to differing definitions of a specific word. In this case, I suspect it is 'philosophy'. Merriam Webster has a few definitions, of which 'pursuit of wisdom' would probably satisfy those lumping science in with philosophy. On the other hand, 'a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means' would tend to exclude science.

It probably doesn't matter in this forum which definition you use; what matters most on the internet is that the other guy is wrong. (And if you think I'm talking about you, I'm not. It's the other guy who's actually wrong. We are right-on here. Yes sir! Go us. we rock.

It's a measurement of a property of some (yet unknown) material whose thermal insulation properties are somehow linked to it's inductance: "Crank up the insulator coils; there's a cold front coming soon."