Thursday, 29 July 2010

Also, Dogs Should Be Made To Wear Trousers

My latest GeekPlanet article is up now, which concerns itself with the adventures of a plucky little octopus named Paul.

On a related subject, I learned from BigHead today that professional Jew-baiting nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has pointed at Paul as a example of everything that is wrong with Western civilisation. This may be because octopuses look a little bit like a balloon attached to eight ties (which he also hates), but I think something more subtle is going on here. I think he's trying to defame Paul, eroding his authority before the Americans have the chance to indulge in some "extraordinary rendition" and claim Paul for themselves.

After all, what better way for the US to decide which country to needlessly crush next than the say so of a clairvoyant octopus? As Bighead pointed out earlier, a system by which any given country has only a 50% chance of being invaded by bloodthirsty Americans could very easily be thought of as an improvement. I'd certainly take Paul over Mitt Romney any day of the week.

4 comments:

Tomsk said...

I enjoyed the article but Paul was already famous from Euro 2008 where he predicted 4 out of 6 correct. So in fact he's actually getting better the more media scrutiny he receives. What are the odds of that?

Dan Edmunds said...

I thought it was 7 out of 8?

Gooder said...

Was he around for Germany 2006? I vaguely remember some kind of sea life prediction going on then too

SpaceSquid said...

I knew about Paul's earlier flirtation with the media, but from what I can tell (i.e. what my football experts tell me) it wasn't really much a story back then, certainly in comparison to how big a story it was in the last month or two.

Looking at his results from 2008 (which were indeed 4 out of 6) he only got one right before getting the next one wrong, so already it's not as interesting a story, even if at one point he was four for five. And even given his earlier exposure, the story didn't break this time around until he was 3 for 3.