Steve Jurvetson's enthusiasms, since he discovered Hotmail in the 1990s, have grown ever more baroque: nanotechnology; rockets; and now "synthetic life forms." (He should know.) The wide-eyed DFJ partner believes, with gene-splicing, they're only a couple of years away. But his prediction, made to a panel this Tuesday, was so bewildering that one of his fellow panelists quipped: "This is particularly interesting given that you've never even experimented with hallucinogenics."