The Angry Birds Effect

摘要

I have fallen under the spell of one of the most sinister forces in the digital universe. Yes, I'm talking about Angry Birds. I managed to avoid the birds' pull for a long time, hi fact, I refused to even download the game until the rest of the world had more or less stopped incessantly talking and tweeting about it. I mean, how great could one game be? So great, I guess, that while I was writing this column "news" broke on the internet that Angry Birds had finally infiltrated the hallowed halls of academia. A physics teacher used an infographic of the game to illustrate a problem. Part of me wonders if Mr. Hutton, my physics teacher, is behind this. He used to let us bring in bass guitars to learn about frequency and had us throwing softballs to unravel the mysteries of trajectory. It seems like something he would do. I'm sure if he could have used the clunky old games we used to play on our graphing calculators on an exam, he would have.