Paul the Octopus Oracle's Prediction A Fake

Update: The world-renowned psychic octopus, Paul, has now picked Spain to beat Germany during the World Cup semi-finals tomorrow. Watch the video here.



Paul, a 2-year old octopus oracle residing in the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany has become widely popular with his predictions for Germany's WC games. Many believe this is a joke, however, Paul has so far predicted five of Germany's games and all of them are spot on--even Serbia's upset victory over Die Mannschaft.

The psychic octopus makes his prediction by choosing between two containers with food that are lowered into his tank. Both boxes are identical except for the flags -- one is with a German flag, the other, with the flag of the opponent. The box where Paul gets the mussel from is the winner.

On Sunday night, the blogosphere became abuzz when photos of Paul choosing Spain over Germany floated around. This caused quite a frenzy and some people actually thought it was real. Why do people say it's fake? Well, upon closer inspection, the image seems to be photoshopped as it is identical to the prediction image during the Germany versus Serbia pick. Also, unlike the previous picks, there was no video evidence available online to support this pick. Lastly, Paul usually makes his predictions the day before the game. Since Spain and Germany won't be meeting until Wednesday the 7th of July, it's safe to assume that the prediction will be released tomorrow.

Brazil vs North Korea 2010

Watched the game last night and I must say that I was pretty impressed with North Korea's showing. Not only did their excellent defending prevent the Selecao from having a goal in the first half but they also managed to have the Brazilians concede one goal. Another thing that I liked with the NK team was that they didn't have any "drama queens". Jong Tae-Se was down and in pain with a nasty gash on his left knee after clashing with Melo, however, Tae-Se played on. If that would've been a star player from say, Portugal, he would've been lying on the grass for ages and milking the incident for all its worth.

The game ended 2-1 for Brazil with North Korea scoring near the end of the match. Kudos to the North Korean team for making the Brazilians work every step of the way in a match that a lot of people thought was gonna be a walk in the park for the Selecao.

2010 World Cup

The biggest football event ever is only two days away and I can barely contain my excitement. In anticipation of said event, I have been browsing through different sports sites for any World Cup-related news and have even started a betting pool among friends on who will win.

I am rooting for Germany all the way. I think it's about time that they win another WC since it's been too long since their last one.

While site-surfing, I found this predictor that Castrol has come up with. They have supposedly calculated the chance each nation has of progressing through to the knockout stages by using in-depth objective data on past team and player performances.