There are some things you can say with absolute certainty about octopuses.
- They live in water.
- They should have eight arms.
- They are very tasty in salad, especially the babies.
- They know nothing of football.
- They have no understanding of the nation state.
- They cannot predict the future.
Until Wednesday morning I would have thought all these assertions were uncontroversial, apart from maybe the one about the nation state. Hell no! Within thirty minutes, to my certain knowledge, the good sense of millions of viewers and listeners of British and French radio and TV had been insulted with reports of “Paul” the octopus.
The BBC, which sometimes moonlights as a source of serious news, reported that before his home country played England “Paul the octopus chose a mussel from a jar with the German flag on it ahead of one in a similar jar bearing the cross of St George.” By such means he predicted the winner.
The Daily Telegraph has an account of him pulling off the same trick before the Germany Spain match.
Let’s deconstruct this.
Even the smartest of aquatic creatures don’t name their offspring after early Christian writers.
Television sets don’t work underwater and the refraction through the glass and water would prevent “Paul” from having a clear view of what’s happening on screen when watching football.
Without access to a really expensive TV sports subscription he wouldn’t be able to watch all the major games that Germany’s opponents play. That would be difficult because you need money to have satellite TV and there are no paying jobs for octopuses anywhere. Of course there would be in a workers’ state.
If underwater creatures really had the ability to look into the future they would have killed the first bugger to move out of the water because they’d have known that it would evolve into a species with bloody big trawlers that would hunt many of them to the verge of extinction.
Just maybe “Paul” the football predicting octopus is the harbinger of a new epoch of life on this planet in which species talks unto species and the barriers of time and space are eliminated. Or maybe a bunch of offensively lazy journalists with no grasp of how statistics work should not be allowed anywhere near an outlet.
Liam redux 
Leave a reply to skidmarx Cancel reply