The future is Octopus shaped (From Watford Observer)

The future is Octopus shaped

4:38pm Sunday 11th July 2010

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By Michael Duffy »

For those of you paying attention you`ve probably noticed that I`m not to be trusted when it comes to making predictions on the outcome of major sporting events, in my last report to the nation I forecast that England would overcome Germany

Now someone whose judgement can be trusted is Paul the Psychic Octopus the “Oracle of Oberhausen” who has successfully predicted the results of 7 out of 7 World Cup matches so far and who has chosen Spain to win.

Just to make sure I could trust Paul 100% ( and with nothing better to do ) I carried out a little research on him and his invertebrate mates.

It appears that Octopus are highly intelligent with the extent of their intelligence and learning capability much debated among biologists, I discovered whole university thesis written on problem-solving experiments with evidence shown that they do have both short- and long-term memory.

As Octopus can be trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns and can even use their arms to open a screwtop jar it all adds up for me, Paul is actually thinking about the question posed and the use of his arms to indicate his choice of winner is deliberate.

Octopus have extremely good vision, better than a human so this leads me to think that there must be more they can be used for to improve the beautiful game.

For example, the game needs more referees as many are discouraged from taking it up due to the verbals they get from the players.

This wouldn`t worry an octopus too much as one burst of ink in the offenders face would soon deter others, an octopus is ideally equipped to referee, one arm could carry the whistle, pencil in one & notebook in two others, red & yellow cards taken care of, flags for both touchlines ( remember their eyesight is so good we won`t need linesmen) and that still leaves one tentacle free for his watch.

As our octopus referees are psychic then teams could save money on having large squads to cover injuries & suspensions as the ref could pop into the changing room beforehand and say a few words along the lines of “ Good clean game today lads, number 5 if you don`t want to be sent off in the 44th minute then don`t chop the legs off their number 9 “

Football pundits like Alan Hansen & Lee Dixon may not be too happy as they would be joined on the sofa in the pre match build up by a pundit octopus so when big Alan comes out with “ I`m going for Liverpool to win it by at least 3 as the United defence is just not playing as a unit “

“Au contraire “ chips in our octopus “ I think we`ll see that not only will their defence stay watertight big Rio will go up for a corner in the 64th minute and bang 1-0 United, game over “

Lee Dixon just won`t say anything as he knows the octopus is never wrong.

The future`s bright , the future`s octopus

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