The Octopus Knows Too Much, Get Rid Of Him
link German fans want revenge grilling of oracle octopus | Reuters.
As my occasionally sober friend who crystal ball gazes for a living pointed out to me about this story, “tough crowd!” The poor octopus presciently picks all of the winners in the recent World Cup soccer matches and the reward for picking eventual winner Spain over the octopus’ hometown Germans qualifies him for what treatment?
“…Throw him in the frying pan,” wrote the Berliner Kurier newspaper, and
“…Nothing beats grilled octopus,” said Dolores Lusch, a Germany fan who works on a Berlin fish stall. “Cut him up in thin slices and grill him on all sides with a dash of lemon juice, olive oil and garlic on it. Delicious!…”
Talk about your tough crowd as well as shooting, or in this case, grilling the messenger. According to people who would know these things, octopi are among the most intelligent of invertebrates. If in fact this particular one is representative of the entire species, it would make more sense to harvest them and turn them into bookies. With marginally more training, they can be harnessed to become stock market forecasters or even weathermen.
They can even be brought into the legal process, quickly assigning guilt or innocence without the protracted legal shenanigans in place today. If this poor creature, Paul, is destined for a fiery end, what message will that send to other aspiring invertebrates who yearn to evolve out of the sea? What right do humans have to impede the path of evolution? Sure they may be slimy with as many arms as Warren Beatty on a date, but if spotted owls can be saved, so can octopi.
Imagine if a dog were able to spell or recite verse. Would we rush to throw it onto a spit because he started throwing out political opinions? Okay, bad example, but you get the point. There should be no glass ceilings for animals or inverterbrates. Where is PETA when you need them? This is all about harnessing green solutions to the world’s problems.
Not only that, but there would be enormous financial benefits If octopi came into common use; the cost is only a few clams, snails or miscellaneous small fish, far below the rate charged by any union to perform the same task.
On the other hand, grilling the messenger if applied to those humans involved in the prediction business could vastly improve the records of those in that racket, or at the very least, thin them out. Next time your broker gives you a stock pick, you can literally hold his feet to the fire.