Octopus Proves Everything we Thought about Religion and Science is Wrong

I'm afraid that people are unwilling to admit the full implication of Paul the octopus's predictions. In predicting the winner of games, Paul took longer to predict the winner in close matches. This shows that the final scores weren't just revealed to him. That closer games took longer to predict means Paul saw the future on some fast forwarded Tivo-like apparatus, and in those closer games he had to watch the game all the way to the end.

The implication of this is clear, with special talents and perceptions a sentient being can see the future. Perhaps it is not seeing. Perhaps it is simply understanding that time is but an illusion. Nonetheless, the fact that an octopus of all creatures is first to demonstrate this ability shows two things: modern science and the Judeo/Chrisitian/Islamic model of understanding the world is horrendously flawed. For both the JCI model and modern science completely rule out the possibility of a lowly invertebrate predicting future world events. For science, man is the dominant creature who contains the highest level of sentient functions. It looks like in that 95% of dark matter that science cannot currently comprehend, some entity is projecting World Cup soccer matches that humans cannot currently perceive. And for the JCI, there are but one God (or three depending on how you count that Trinity), a God who reveals his majesty to human prophets, not eight-legged ink producers incapable of profiting off this knowledge at a sports book.

So how does the octopus access this higher level of consciousness, one where future events are fast-forwarded? We cannot be sure. But the facts before us are starkly clear, this realm exists and it is possible to be accessed. This octopus has done so. It remains for the rest of us to discover it as well. The first one to do so gets crowned the new Jesus/Ace Rothstein. Here's hoping it is I.

A Legal No-Man's Land

I came across this news story a few weeks ago. I couldn't blog about it then because the future ex-Mrs Fantastic was still in town and she's demanding of my time.

So the upshot of that article is that a US Army civilian threatened to kill his neighbor with an ax. The neighbor had been blowing a vuvuzela during a World Cup game. This threat took place in the city of Weiden, the lovely German city I live in. So coupled with that I'm also an attorney for the Army, I can offer insight as well as geographic proximity to this story.

Here is that insight: The US Army civilian is an a unique place legally. If the Germans do not prosecute a US civilian criminally then the civilian faces no criminal sanction. The US authorities may bar a civilian from post or from receiving a stay beyond a tourist visa. And of course those can be punishments and/or annoyances, but they don't go on your permanent record the same way a conviction does. The only blemish to one's permanent record is that a MP report is created with the civilian's name as the subject. If that civilian later seeks a job with the government the report will be available during the background check, making employment harder to come by. And of course, this civilian who threatened Germans with an ax may lose his or her current job. However, considering the amount of US civilians out here, especially the number of children to servicemembers, one does not have to think too hard about situations in which criminal acts may go unpunished, especially since this is a much more decriminalized society than ours. So if a crime is simply at a minimum level where the Germans do not care to prosecute, then even if an American district attorney or Army Judge Advocate would prosecute the case if they could, the US civilian will face no criminal sanction.

Any who, the main point of this post is that I was in a unique position to discuss this case a few weeks ago when it happened. That's Weiden on the right. The young Germans blow vuvuzelas all the time here and it's annoying enough to drive a person to threaten murder. And since I couldn't blog about this story when it happened I had to settle for comments on other websites, where I tried to make the points made above, although much briefer, on my new favorite website, Deadspin. But the authors/editors of Deadspin deleted two of my attempts to share these valuable insights. And what's even more enraging, is that something similiar happened at Gawker a week prior to the Deadspin deletions, except that at Gawker another commenter stole the joke I had made in a subsequent comment of his own.

So essentially the entire point of this post is that I spend too much time making internet comments and checking on the responses, only to see the jokes stolen and the comments deleted. It's a ridiculous state of affairs. If it were not for the power of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice to punish me, I would ax chop every last one of them.

Hitler is More Evil than Lebron James, but just Barely

So Lebron James engages in an hour of ridiculous self-promotion and people on the interwebs completely lose their minds. Deadspin goes nuts, which is weird since they're so good at making fun of shit that needs to be made fun of and not the slightly annoying stuff that this is. Case in point, it's great when they go after owners of sports franchises who are truly insane.

But my God, a superstar athlete acts like an attention hungry man-child and the world goes crazy. Keep in mind that he's also trying to take the sting out of losing $30 million by raising his brand name. He was hoping to get some more endorsements and jersey sales but he miscalculated and came across like an ass. Yes it's douchey to be so self-important, but Lebron did arrange for the ad money from this spectacle to go to charity so are you really that mad? It's not his fault he lives in a saturated media culture. He's just using it for his own purposes. So he's self-centered. Whatever. He's not running for Jesus so can everyone just calm the eff down?

Anyways, my favorite overreaction has been by Bill Plashke. He called Lebron James crass, callous and a coward. To sum up Plashke's rant, he's basically saying Lebron James broke up with the city that loved him in the wrong way and that he was undeserving of this attention since he never won a championship.

Dealing with that first idiocy, really? You're outraged the guy made an announcement on TV? Maybe Lebron should have taken Cleveland out to lunch. Except that might be a little pricey to take out a few million people at once and he did just lose $30 million. Perhaps he should have done what the new media darling Kevin Durant did. Durant tweeted his decision to get the max contract from his home team. And now loyal is every sportswriter's favorite word, like an athlete is supposed to stay with a team no matter what. It doesn't matter how incapable the team is of ever winning a championship due to it's small market nature and bat-shit crazy owner. Loyalty is the new metric by which we measure athletes, not how much they desire winning.

But what's even more ridiculous is that Plashke is so enraged that he won't give Lebron any credit at all. He also wrote, "Don't buy the spin that, because he could have made a guaranteed $30 million more on a potential Cavaliers contract, James is leaving Cleveland only because he wants to win." Really? Then why is he walking away from that $30 million? Shits and giggles? So he can live a Buddhist life of austerity?

Bill never offers a reason why Lebron took less money. He just offers why Lebron couldn't win in Cleveland. Apparently Lebron "left because he didn't have the innards to take the final step with complementary players that the Cavaliers continued to acquire." So apparently Lebron didn't win because he didn't have the proper innards for winning. So the Cleveland roster was filled with players who could win a championship, if only Lebron's innards were built for said winning. Maybe if Lebron had a better gastrointestinal tract he could have stopped Manu Ginobli, Tony Parker and Tim Duncan from running all over a Cleveland team that had Daniel Gibson starting in a finals series. Or maybe a less immuno-deficient spleen could have made Ilgouskis or Varajo defend Dwight Howard one-on-one in 2009, preventing Orlando from swinging the ball around to their unguarded 3 point shooters. Or maybe stronger stomach acid could have dissolved Rajon Rondo and prevented him from throwing down Oscar Roberston style triple-doubles against an over-matched Cleveland back-court. Seriously, does anyone still think Cleveland team is worth anything? What happens when that team hovers at .500 and barely makes the play-offs next year? Will Plashke attribute their sucking to Delonte West's innards? Or will it force him admit that Lebron James is the best basketball player on the planet who made a pretty mediocre team one of the league's best and after 7 years of trying to win with a franchise that couldn't attract another legitimate player, Lebron has now done what every sports writer has always asked a super star athlete to do, to be less selfish and take less money and focus on winning a championship? Oh no it won't, cause loyalty is how we measure athletes now. We should pick athletes the same way we pick our puppies, that will put people in the seats and banners in the rafters.

Anyways, I do have some last minor points. For anyone who says the Florida tax laws make up for walking away from $30 million then you are an idiot. Ohio taxes income above $200,000 at 6%. And for you mental retards who would say such a thing let me do that math for you: Lebron is losing around $28 million by going to Miami. (Of course this doesn't compare property or sales tax but I can't imagine they make up for that final $28 million in a significant way.) Secondly, saying Lebron didn't win a championship so he's undeserving of attention ignores how overrated championships are when evaluating the talent of players in team sports. How good a player is is neither sufficient or necessary for winning a trophy. Should Steve Kerr get an hour on television to talk about how he landed ass-backwards onto amazing teams to win 5? Or maybe Kobe would like to talk about how he wanted to leave the Lakers in the beginning of 2007, you know, because there wasn't enough talent around him to get him out of the first round of the playoffs? Is that the type of intestinal fortitude Plashcke is talking about? Whining about not having enough talent and then having your GM steal Pau Gasol for a ham sandwich in one of the most unfair trades in the history of mankind?

So in conclusion, people are ridiculous and get angry over ridiculous things. And for some reason the media turns against a person and then creates arbitrary standards on how to evaluate their new darling. I cannot wait for the day that Kevin Durant tweets or updates his facebook status or pod casts his trade demand to a contender.