Tuesday, August 23, 2011

AMAZON HAS NEVER JUST BEEN A RIVER IN SOUTH AMERICA: The Beloit Mindset List for the Class of 2015, which does not mention the fact that they now live in a world in which eating your newborn's placenta can be discussed in a major magazine.

27 comments:

  1. This week's NY piece is not the first placentavore piece in a major mag--Time did one a few years back and apparently Tom Cruise mentioned his plans to eat his forthcoming child's placenta in a GQ interview in 2006.  There's also the legend of the Placenta Helper sketch.

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  2. Katie9:36 AM

    today is the first of two freshman move in days for my campus.  already i've talked to a sobbing mother, and next i'll be talking to a hostile father.  august is not my favorite month...

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  3. Meghan9:37 AM

    This makes me sad:
    Major League Baseball has never had fewer than three divisions and never lacked a wild card entry in the playoffs.

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  4. Dan Suitor10:01 AM

    <span>47. No state has ever failed to observe Martin Luther King Day</span>
    Technically, New Hampshire observed some abominable alternate holiday called "Civil Rights Day" for a large portion of my childhood, which would overlap with the Beloiteers' lifespan.

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  5. Marsha10:24 AM

    #2 is really scary to me: Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents. Of course, these kids were born after I graduated from college, so I very easily could be, too. 

    And I don't know what this one means, which I suppose really makes me old: They’ve grown up hearing about suspiciously vanishing frogs.

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  6. Dan (and other youngsters here), did you ever buy music on cassettes or was it always CDs?

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  7. I'm 22 and definitely remember buying an Eric Clapton cassette and a Grammy Nominees cassette when I was about 10-ish.

    So it is possible (although not likely?) that kids born in 1993 might have?

    I'm also not sure about the Sears "Big Book" one, since we definitely got the Sears "Wish Book" until I was probably around 12 - so these kids would have been old enough to remember it.  Although I am Canadian, so maybe it's different?

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  8. I'm class of 2014 and I definitely had chidren's music tapes when I was little (anyone else listen to Cathy and Marcy?), but by the time I was ready to buy my own music it was all CDs. 

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  9. ChinMusic12:32 PM

    I am confused by the OJ reference.  When do they assume these kids were born?  A kid born after June 1994 probably is not entering college this year, right?  Then again, the "Yadda, yadda, yadda" episode of Seinfeld didn't air until the spring of 1997 and a kid born after that date is very unlikely to be entering college.  And if they never wanted to be like Mike, a commercial that started running in 1991, then they probably weren't watching basketball any time before 1998, when Jordan won his sixth title, fifth MVP award and sixth Finals MVP award.

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  10. girard311:08 PM

    My daughter is a freshman at Pitt. She never watched her favorite shows at their assigned times (she DVR'd them or watched them online).

    She never heard a busy signal.

    She rarely used a landline.

    Newspapers are something her Dad reads, so #75 means nothing to her.

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  11. Dan Suitor1:16 PM

    I had cassettes bought for me, but by the time I was old enough to seek out music on my own (say 11 or 12) it was all CDs. 

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  12. bella wilfer1:42 PM

    ChinMusic - I think the list is more re: when kids were old enough to remember things or think things of a certain nature were important (ie a kid who was 2 in 1994 wasn't following the OJ case, etc).  

    Here's the one I don't get: <span>The United States has always been shedding fur.</span>

    Am I a total idiot for not understanding that? 

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  13. isaac_spaceman2:28 PM

    Amazon has never been just a river in South America.  It also is an extremely athletic woman who wears spangled underwear and knee-high leather boots and carries a golden lasso that makes you tell the truth. 

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  14. bella wilfer2:35 PM

    Though to these kids that version of Amazon is played by Tyra from Friday Night Lights...

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  15. Dan Suitor2:49 PM

    Too bad that pilot didn't get picked up; I would've really loved to see Adrienne Palicki toss on the boots and bustier on a weekly basis.

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  16. isaac_spaceman2:53 PM

    You saw the pictures, right?  Not picking up that pilot was the best thing a network could have done for my dear Adrianne Palicki. 

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  17. Watts2:57 PM

    I spoke to approximately 600 male first year students yesterday.  My observations:
    1. Boat shoes/soft loafers are more en vogue than flip-flops.
    2. The mid-calf black sock with shorts and athletic shoes is a thing that's actually happening.

    (Caveat: these were all new members of social fraternities, but they're echoing what I see around campus.)

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  18. Squid4:17 PM

    One sheds fur lest one get hit with a bucket of red paint.

    I guess Minnesota is no longer part of the US, since we continue to wear fur up here.  Mostly to go ice fishing, but still.

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  19. JosephFinn7:00 PM

    Wonderful, I know.   The 2 divisions setup was a mess long before 1994 and the wild card one of the few purely good things to come out of the Selig era. Add in some geographic tweeking (like the Tigers moving into the Central when the Brewers moved over to the NL), and all you need to do is fix the NL Central and AL West mess and you're just right.

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  20. JosephFinn7:01 PM

    Frog population declines since the 1980's, Marsha.  Actually very serious.

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  21. Becca7:39 PM

    I think its about time for the boat shoe/topsider to make its return, as I think we last wore them when I was in elementary school. That's fair.

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  22. Emily9:19 PM

    I worked with ~500 freshman today, all born in 1993. One was wearing a Tiffani-Amber Thiessen t-shirt and some of my colleagues commented in succession: "That's a great t-shirt;" "She's old enough to be his mom;" and "I think I had that poster on my wall when I was his age."

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  23. bella wilfer3:25 PM

    I've seen the pilot.  And now I follow the old rule of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all..."

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  24. ChrisH8:54 PM

    I've never quite understood this list.  Some of the items are good for understanding the mindset of college freshmen, but others are just generic "Oh My God we're so much older than them" comments.  Does the average college freshman really use Seinfeld references?  How many have seen Forrest Gmp?

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  25. Marsha3:40 PM

    How odd - I've never heard about this. Ever. Bee issues, not frogs.

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  26. Marsha3:41 PM

    Cathy and Marcy rock - Maddy, you should get a hold of some of their grown-up music.

    And the Sears Wish Book is not, I believe, the same as the big book. The Wish Book was a holiday catalog and much smaller.

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  27. Anonymous12:54 PM

    Look for the picture book "The Frog Scientist," by Pamela S. Turner (supposed to be one of the best of kids' nonfiction in recent years).
    http://www.pamelasturner.com/the_frog_scientist_79242.htm 

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