Evolution of One

Scott Hardie | July 22, 2005
For anybody wondering what happened to all those incorrect guesses for Science (0600), I was disappointed to see a string of shot-in-the-dark guesses like bacteria, DNA, stem cell, and HIV virus. To me, these things definitely don't qualify as celebrities, but players are baffled and have no idea what my boundaries are, and that's no fair.

So, with a notice to the Goo Announcement list (link) I voided all incorrect guesses, and revealed that this goo is definitely a human being. How does a lone individual evolve when evolution, by definition, happens to an entire species? Aaron Shurtleff might know the answer, but the rest of you will have to figure it out. Good luck.

Jackie Mason | July 22, 2005
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 22, 2005
I can understand that; if I were a player it would probably turn me off too. But most of the guesses so far have been really off the mark because players didn't know what I was looking for. I hope a few people can get it right now that I have narrowed the field.

Scott Horowitz | July 22, 2005
I thought I had it... oh well, I just suck at this game. Can someone tell me why I still play? I want to know Amy's secret. I have this theory of an affair between her and Hardie, but it just seems so far-fetched....hmmmm, nah. Ed would wipe the floor with him... I'm a bit overtired right now, so if I say anything stupid, just ignore it......

David Mitzman | July 22, 2005
The answer to your question is obvious Ho. Have you looked in a mirror lately? Oh dip.

Aaron Shurtleff | July 22, 2005
Oh, nice one, Scott! No pressure on me now! :P

Scott Hardie | July 23, 2005
Don't be down on yourself, Scott. You entered a great guess. It just had the unlucky condition of being incorrect. :-)

Shh, Aaron, don't tell anybody: I'm secretly hoping you get it right so other people start thinking it's maybe not so hard.

Scott Hardie | July 26, 2005
Ok, you can read about Henrietta Lacks all over the web like I did, but here's the gyst of her story: Ordinary woman dies of cancer. Her doctor secretly keeps the cells from her tumor and divides them for further research. His work gets copied over and over again. Fifty years later, her cells are the baseline standard in medical research experiments all over the world. Her identity was just recently revealed.

What's even cooler about the story (to me) is that some of the cells devolved into living single-cell organisms all their own. By my count, this makes three landmarks:
1) It's the first time a human being has been known to evolve into another organism (albeit post-mortem).
2) It's a rare instance of a single organism evolving by itself. Evolution by definition requires multiple organisms, but in a sense, Ms. Lacks is now a new species.
3) It's a recorded, observed instance of evolution in a laboratory. One common argument against evolution is that it takes millions of years and can't be observed, but here's a recently living woman who became a race of little tiny one-celled organisms in a Petri dish. That's amazing.

Anyway, I loved the story, and I thought it would a cool goo because I could get a microscopic photo of the cells as a source image. I didn't mean it to be so hard, honest; I thought several people would get it right. But I've said it a million times, I can never tell how hard or easy my goos will be, and that's getting to be a real annoyance lately. Anyway, I hope you can enjoy Ms. Lacks's story even if you failed to guess her goo.

Aaron Shurtleff | July 26, 2005
I had a feeling it would something like this. I thought the image looked like a computer generated model of a protein, but I couldn't find the story. I knew it had to be some kind of mutant...but a search for mutants only bring up X-men! :)

It's a good one, Scott. Don't get down on yourself.

Scott Horowitz | July 26, 2005
Damn, and I thought I was on the right track with the sex change.

Amy Austin | July 26, 2005
I went to bed rather pissed, because I can't tell you how many times I read about HeLa cells (*bing*!) and thought I was just dreaming that I might be really hot on the trail with a search on "pleomorphic human" after learning about species evolution on the cellular level. (This came after many lines of thought -- including my first instinct of the "Elephant Man" -- and transexuals, too, Scott Ho!) ARRRGGGHHH. And, as if that weren't bad enough, I kept telling E not to be so damn sure that it was a picture of cells (he was totally hung up on "stem cells" and wanted to enter that as his guess -- he was *so close* all along!), since I've seen Scott do some pretty misleading things with source images now. (Think "Dio" and "Al Zaraqwi".)

Oh well... I think I might have said it before (but if I haven't, I will now) -- I don't view the time I spend researching goos as a waste of time at all... I have learned so much by playing this game, and that's just part of the reason I love (may be addicted to) it so much. All of you who keep asking me what my secret is? I would have to say that it is also partly an insatiable curiosity and a really strong drive to learn new things -- which I am sure to do when I play this game. (Thanks, Scott! ;-D)

I'm still pissed about not getting it, though. (And Elliot Farney better look out when I finally decide to submit a list of goo clues that I've been working on, too! ;-DDDDD)

Scott Horowitz | July 26, 2005
If you're losing sleep over this game, Amy, maybe it is time to retire...

Mike Eberhart | July 26, 2005
Just saying.....

"I think when the new round begins in a week, I will re-commit myself to having easy, and more importantly fun goos, dominating the game."

Amy Austin | July 26, 2005
Did I say that I was? If I'm losing sleep over *anything* lately, it's buying a house two weeks before my husband goes to Iraq until sometime next year.

Edit: Hahaha... I hear ya', Mike!

Scott Horowitz | July 26, 2005
I think the hard ones make the game more interesting... it keeps ya on your toes while being frustrated

Scott Hardie | July 27, 2005
I'll write more later when I have time, but: This goo is one of the fun ones I had in mind when I wrote that sentence. It's an interesting celebrity, and it inspired some interesting guesses, and it's totally bizarre and unlike any goo before it. So nyah. ;-)

I guess it's only fun if it can be guessed correctly?

Mike Eberhart | July 27, 2005
You know I'm just giving you a hard time. :)

Scott Hardie | July 29, 2005
Of course. But I can't blame Anna for elucidating herself unnecessarily if I don't elucidate myself when necessary, or something like that.

Let's just say that if I ever decide to consider "DNA" a valid celebrity, it is already guaranteed a spot in the next Do-Over Week.

I shouldn't speak for players, but I don't think Elliot's Music goo (0604) is supposed be very difficult either. It's a better-known person than Henrietta Lacks, I can say that much. (Of course, this is information is never considered helpful, so I should just stop offering it.)

I think Scott's suggestion might have more to do with your retirement than with your health, Amy. ;-)

Just for the record, I've been having problems sending mail lately. I've sent mail to Mike, Kelly Stokes, Denise, Matt, and others only to be notified it was still undelivered after 48 or 72 hours. If you ask me a question about a goo, I'm not ignoring you, it's just that my mail server hates me and everything I stand for. I'm in touch with tech support about it.

Mike Eberhart | August 2, 2005
Hey, what happened to Amy? Did she quit the game and TC?

Scott Hardie | August 3, 2005
No, she and Ed are still around. I'll let them share the news.

Scott Horowitz | August 4, 2005
gmail Scott.... gmail

Scott Hardie | August 7, 2005
I may have to. The problem isn't going away, and so far, tech support's solutions are ineffective. I would hate to give up my celebritygoogame.com address, though "gmail" would be a lot easier to spell out for people. :-)

David Mitzman | August 8, 2005
So if amy and ed plan on sharing news, I'd hope it's soon because you posted that 5 days ago and we haven't heard from them :)

Amy Austin | August 8, 2005
Well... so sorry, Dave Mitzman!!! ;-D

If you haven't already guessed, the "monumental chore" was moving into OUR NEW HOUSE (yay!!!) -- but I haven't been up to writing too much about it yet because the very stressful move out of our rented "Petri dish" (as one friend so aptly called it) made me sicker than I have been in a really long time! (In case you don't remember or didn't read it, I had described the icky moisture issues of the manufactured/mobile home that we were renting in town -- you don't even begin to know the half of it!!!)

We finished the move on Friday, thankfully (although we were shooting for last Sunday, the 31st!), but I've spent most of the weekend just decompressing and coughing a whole lot, while all the gooey goodies in my head and chest decide to loosen up and get the hell out. I'm hoping to be done with it altogether before the coming weekend... and then there's all this UNpacking to do!!! :-( Poor Ed (who was also a bit sick, but is already over it) has had *no* decompress time -- his pre-deployment work schedule has had him going in every single day of the week and staying well past normal quitting time, only to have to come "home" and load up the boxes I've been packing and drive them 20 miles out, unload, and go to bed. This is the gist of how this move was accomplished -- by just the two of us -- in a little over a week.

I'll probably put the full scoop back over on the original thread I started for this "adventure" -- "Heinous House Hunting" -- if you want to read the more painful/detailed version there later.

Amy Austin | August 8, 2005
P.S. (for Scott Hardie) --

I'm also a little bit confused how it is that my incorrect guess gap has seemed to keep widening during my period of inactivity??? Last I knew (after the incorrect guess that unexpectedly knocked me down a couple of places!), my correct guess percentage was 92% or over, with less than 20 total incorrect. Curiously, it dropped again -- despite a new streak of correct guesses -- and the total incorrect is now over 20! Normally I wouldn't even really notice, but I guess I'm just confused that any changes seem to have occurred in my absence... maybe this is just because you had to adjust things manually after I thought the tally was already correct and hadn't been around to see otherwise? Or is the loss of an already filled square having some statistical impact that it shouldn't??? Just wondering.

David Mitzman | August 8, 2005
That's right. About time someone here recognized my greatness and apologized :-p

Scott Hardie | August 8, 2005
Glad you're finally in, Amy. Moving's already enough of a bitch, but it seems like there's always something to make it extra-hard. Hope you're liking the new place as much as it seems. :-)

As for the numbers, it's because the higher value is the total number of goos you've seen in active play, whether you guessed them or not. Since you have not yet guessed the four newest goos, that number has gone up by four. According to my math, your score would go up to 92.8% if you correctly guess all four.

Scott Hardie | August 8, 2005
Did I say if? I meant when.

Amy Austin | August 8, 2005
Hahaha... to both of you. (Actually, that would be a big "HAHAHAHAHA" to Dave!)

Ah, I see -- I did not realize that the total figure continued to rise without a guess... I figured it was a total number of guesses made, rather than a running tally. So, if that's the case, then how would a player "sit one out" without killing this figure? Seems to me that they could not... is this intended? (I realize that this is a fairly new statistical addition to the site, with no real reward to it except a measure of one's own accuracy, perhaps -- but that's why I thought it was weird that it should change without any effort on behalf of the player -- know what I mean?)

Yes, I think we shall like it a great deal, once we've dealt with all the irritants (putting up a fence so that new neighbor "crazy cat lady" can stop with the evil eye, unpacking all the boxes that currently have to be squeezed past to get anywhere and dug through to find anything, that sort of thing...) Thanks!

Jerry Mathis | August 9, 2005
Congrats Amy!

We finally get to move into our new house this weekend!

Amy Austin | August 9, 2005
Hey, that's great, Jerry -- "congrats", yourself! I was wondering why no updates from you... I guess you've already learned the lesson of premature celebration (i.e., sharing the news before the actual closing), eh? ;-)

Scott Hardie | August 12, 2005
You can't sit one out without affecting the number, just like with your streak. The game is based on being right, not based on "not being wrong," so failure to guess is just as bad as guessing wrong. I'd work consistency into more scoring systems if that didn't penalize the occasional players much more than the daily players.

Amy Austin | August 13, 2005
I see now... but I hadn't made the connection (until now) that the total was actually an accumulation from the point of each player's entry in the game. I thought it was only a total of *attempted* guesses. I suppose that would explain why there is actually a score of 3 out of 237 (1.3%) -- previously, I would have thought he was just a really bad guesser! ;-D

Scott Hardie | August 13, 2005
I try to make it fair and only start counting at the person's first correct guess... But that still leaves out people who guessed once early on and didn't come back to the game for years, like Denise. :-\