Posts by Griffin

Internet advertising has always been a real frustration of mine. I can deal with the subtle ads on google search pages, and a picture of a Chevy in the corner of news articles, but the whole blinking, audible internet ads of late as well as the bars at the bottom of every online video I just can't stand. I don't think I'm the only person that feels this way. Why did ads get this way? Surely annoying people isn't a very effective advertising technique. I have often found myself navigating away from sites with these kind of ads just to avoid annoyance. I think I would be less likely to buy the product the ad is promoting after encountering the ad, so how is it supposed to work? Youtube used to be fairly ad-uninfected, but of late it has caved in order to be able to give more money to it's video posters.

The internet's contribution to the modern world has been quite large. In the nineties the it made its mark through sales and encyclopedia-type websites on everything one could imagine. It was a tool for sharing data of a certain sub-published standard. There were ranters that were present, but they were sparse, and there seemed to be a bar that had to be met in order for something to be on the internet. Fast forward to today, the era of online social networking, and literally everything of any quality is online.

Today, I was thinking about how an old friend once commented on the application of imaginary numbers in math class once. The teacher's response was, “they're kind of cool, and they help you understand some things later on.” Well, having been to later on, I can officially say that being taught about imaginary numbers did not help me, and although plotting complex numbers on an xy-coordinate system is kind of cool, that's a lame explanation for why we are learning something.

I'm glad I learned about imaginary numbers, even though I haven't used them at all after the final exam. This brought about a more disturbing thought. How much of what I have actually learned in high school will be useful to me after the test. I'm not so much concerned about learning useless information, but missing crucial information on key subjects because too much emphasis was placed on some unimportant subject. Dare I mention senior year Morality and Justice?

After our religion classes had to listen to recordings of the christian rock songs now in heavy rotation during school masses, some of my friends and I began joking about our school starting to include christian hardcore songs in the mass repertoire. Christian hardcore, for those normal enough to classify modern music into simple rock and rap genres, is a heavy metal offshoot, that derives its musical sound from death metal, but rather than satanic and secular lyrical themes, it uses the New Testament for lyrical muse.

It was only a matter of time before various heavy metal sub-genres started adopting christian themes because modern metal is usually associated with dramatic lyrical themes. Some kids that grew up listening to traditional metal bands liked the sound, but rejected the whole satanic image because of their christian upbringings. When they started their own bands, they used the traditionally brutal sound and delivery of the music to depict gospel images and themes. These bands are used as a form of ministry, intending to bring God into the lives of angry kids.