> > > Even the women are real men?
> > Darned tootin'.  
> 
> "Anything you can do I can do better!"
>  - Annie Get Your Gun
> 
Well, guys can do some things better.  Like throw rocks and sign their
names in the snow without having to touch it or use a stick....

> > > starchiness of green bananas and about
> > > as much flavor.
> > IOW typical suparmarket apple, if slightly worse.  Some of the new hybrids
> > aren't horrible, but that's damning things with faint praise.  
> 
> Among my acquaintances I can number a
> family of plant breeders, two of whom 
> work for Cornell in that field. Talking
> with them one gets the realization that
> it's more difficult than it sounds, and
> figuring out the market is even harder 
> than that. The person who gave the name 
> Golden Delicious to a product that would 
> better be named Mushy Potato must have 
> gotten very rich.

Or his bosses did anyway; it was probably some random marketing intern. 
That's how these things go.  
 
> > > I wonder what coffee bean extract mixed
> > > with fat and sugar would be like.
> > Starbuck's, most likely.
> 
> I hope not: recently I had a taste of that
> brand's best-selling roast, and it was
> eye-openingly like dead animal crawled into
> one's mouth bad.

Yick.  I've had their blonde roast and it wasn't horrible. I much prefer
Pierce Brothers Dark Roast to just about anything else, but it's not always
easy to find and can cost more than Starbuck's.