Beloit Mindset List

Each year the people at Beloit college come out with a list of things that happened in the year of birth of their freshmen students ie things "they have always known".

Born in 1989, the "Class of 2011" (entering college this year) list included the following items. (I have removed several Americanisms but the full list can be found here)

The Berlin Wall never existed
Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
Rush Limbaugh has always been lambasting liberals.
They never “rolled down” a car window.
Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
They have grown up with bottled water.
General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
Rap music has always been mainstream.
Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
“Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
Music has always been “unplugged.”
Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages.
When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
They grew up in Wayne’s World.
U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.
Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
Fox has always been a major network.
They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.
Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
Most phone calls have never been private.
High definition television has always been available.
Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
Time has always worked with Warner.
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
The purchase of ivory has always been banned.
MTV has never featured music videos.
The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
They’re always texting 1 n other.
They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.
Illinois has been trying to ban smoking since the year they were born.
The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.
Burma has always been Myanmar.
Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.
Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.