Angry Birds:  a game in which Genocide and Suicide Bombing are how one wins the game.

Birds catapult into buildings in order to destroy the Pigs who have been stealing their eggs.  Black Birds explode and White Birds drop exploding eggs.    

Let's not forget, also, that this is also fueled by revenge--the birds are "angry"---and destruction without a sense of justice is the aim.  It's about the thrill of wrecking havoc.

Angry Birds is a child of 9/11.  And it is one of the most popular games out there.

Am I the only one who finds this disturbing?  I've never played it; I don't feel the desire to play at suicide bombing.  And I would never tell other people not to.  After all, the desire for murder and suicide lay within us all.

I didn't include the entire photo of the hysterical woman because I thought the contents were too melodramatic.  But I kept the Hitchcock movie ad because we need to keep this in perspective: the NYTimes wants us to remember that there is entertainment out there which will make us forget this.

That's not a bad thing, really.  And I'm sure the Hitchcock movie will be wonderful and a bit more meaty than usual Hollywood fare.

The real question isn't Why Does This Happen?, but rather, Why Doesn't This Happen More Often?  A paraphrase of Woody Allen.

The causes:  a preliminary and shallow summation would include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, family violence.  Evil---only under the now emerging definition as the "absence of empathy" which I find more accurate and sympathetic.  I feel for the gunman, who committed suicide.  Obviously, his suffering was tremendous and could not, for whatever reasons, couldn't get help.  The real story is, Why did he kill his mother?

Eighteen children died: shouldn't we be relieved that those children don't grow up into bodies which will experience pain and maybe manifest mental disorders not unlike what our gunman suffered?