school

In a paper titled "Falling Into Straw," physics students at the University of Leicester debunked any hope you had in the myth of leaping off a building and landing safely in a haystack in Assassin's Creed. 

After what I'm sure amounted to vigorous research into haystack leaps in the game, the students concluded that, put simply, you shouldn't do that IRL.  While the piles of loose straw would provide some cushioning from falls, you couldn't pull off the kind of jump an assassin does because the haystacks are too small.  The haystacks in game are only about 1.5m tall, and according to the paper, you could fall no further than 12-13m and expect that stack to save you.  If you're willing to sustain "severe injuries," you could stretch that height to about 50m, but you certainly won't be shanking any enemies after that leap of faith.

I hope my teacher didn't find out... :I

Specifically, secondary schools across Northern Ireland are being given copies of MinecraftEdu, a version of the game designed to be educational.  This initiative is expected to bring Minecraft to 50,000 kids, and will be used to teach everything from art to history and computer coding:

Last week we worked with Artichoke and The Space to recreate, in Minecraft, a version of Burning Man artist David Best’s ‘Temple’ in Minecraft.

The real world Temple was a 70ft structure in the city that was ceremonially burnt. When we took it into the schools we were able to give young people a chance to create their own versions of the Temple, working alongside the artist. We’ve seen Minecraft being used to teach everything from coding to physics but I think that there’s a real opportunity to develop more of these kind of creative projects too.

1. Ash got Pikachu because he was late.
2. That's a Magikarp.
3. Ash is nowhere close to being the best.