Left field

from Photographers Blog:

How a simple tentacle became a media star

Sometimes I hold seminars about journalism – photo journalism in particular of course. Most of the time I start talking about the journalistic rule number one.

What is rule number one? Journalism works very simply. When a dog bites a man – this is not a story. Dogs bite men. Unless the man is Prince Charles or the President of the United States, nobody is interested. But the opposite case - when a man bites a dog – that's a story. The story will be even bigger if the man who bites the dog is the U.S. President and the dog belongs to Prince Charles.

However, in the future I must change my seminars and change the picture from the dog to the octopus “Paul” -- better known as the “octopus oracle” at the Sea Life Aquarium of Oberhausen, a former coal mining and steel producing city in western Germany.

The two-and-a-half year-old octopus has become a star all over the world by predicting all six of Germany's 2010 World Cup games correctly - two defeats and four victories.

With his nine brains it takes him only a few moments to choose between two glass boxes – each filled with a delicious mussel. Each box is decorated with the flags of the respective teams that are scheduled to clash in South Africa. The keepers of the Sea Life Aquarium strictly follow the FIFA regulation: the home team gets the left box and the guest team receives the right box. Then hungry Paul reaches with one of his eight tentacles into one of the boxes to steel the little mussel. When the mussel quickly disappears into his mouth a whole nation is plunged into disbelief or jubilation.

The first time I covered Paul’s prediction for Reuters was before the classic clash between England and Germany. Only a handful of TV cameras – most of them local or domestic TV - were there. Then there were, including myself, four photographers from Germany’s biggest daily and three wire agencies. After Paul predicted the Germany-England match and the following game (Germany vs. Argentina) correctly – the media coverage got completely out of hand.

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

Sorry Germany, the oracle octopus has spoken

There are only three things that are certain in life -- death, taxes and the World Cup predictions of a British-born octopus in western Germany.

That being the case, there's hardly any point in playing Wednesday's semi-final between Germany and Spain -- the Spanish have got it won.

Paul the Octopus has spoken, eating his food from the container with the Spanish flag at Sea Life and thus sealing Germany's fate.

Paul has a perfect World Cup record -- correctly predicting the results of all five of Germany's matches so far, even the shock defeat against Serbia, and scoring exactly the same number of goals as Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney into the bargain.

German hopes are dangling by two tiny threads.

Firstly, while Paul has a perfect record here, he did get one match wrong at Euro 2008, predicting a German win over Spain in the final. Secondly, coach Joachim Loew has been persuaded not to wash his famous blue jumper before the end of the World Cup.

The baby blue cashmere number has become a good luck symbol, which leaves us with an intriguing match in store for Wednesday -- the octopus versus the goat-hair.

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

World Cup 2010 quarter-finals podcast

Welcome to our latest Reuters 2010 World Cup podcast, as we follow the lead of the world's most famous psychic octopus and try to predict what will happen in the quarter-finals. Kevin Fylan is joined by Paul Radford, Jon Bramley, Ken Ferris and Mr Mark Gleeson.