If not, have a ready through Beloit College’s Mindset List for the class of 2010, a list that compiles some basic facts about what our current generation of froshes do – and don’t – know about the way the world has always been.
Of the more depressing highlights:
Now pass me my cane and get the hell off my lawn.
The first time I felt old was when I had to explain to a kid what a record player was.
Pulp Fiction was released 12, 12 years ago
There are people in the US old enough to drink legally, people who’s parents haven’t even met when Mary Lou Retton won the gold
Personally, I’ll be surprised if my daughter (age 4) learns to use the card catalog system at the library.
We had a new intern working at my museum’s research library. She had never heard of the Dewey Decimal System. She asked me how we came up with it.
My daughter is just now a college freshman. I showed her this list, and she had to ask about number 63: “Television stations have never concluded the broadcast day with the national anthem.”
I explained that way back in the Dark Ages when there were only three channels, also known as B.C. (before cable), tv stations used to go off the air in the wee hours of the morning, and would end their broadcasting with the National Anthem and a picture of the flag flying. She just looked at me blankly.
I told her to stay the hell off my lawn.
Your library still has a card catalog? Even my poor little library has a computer system these days (courtesy of a bequest from a Friend of the Library).
I’m assuming they will have one.
Me, I haven’t used the elementary school library since… elementary school. 
A kid came to work at the radio station a few years ago, straight out of recording engineer college. He had never seen a turntable before (broke the stylus off the first time he used it, scraping the tonearm across the disc to find a cut, and permanently damaged the record), nor an open reel tape machine. The concept of editing tape with a razor blade and sticky tape just eludes him. We don’t do it anymore, but you try to explain it to him and he is just boggled.
might as well teach her how to churn butter and make buggy whips! 
I love the reference to Law and Order. What, is that been on 12 years now?
This upcoming season will be L&O’s 17 season.
As far as they’re concerned (the 18-year-olds heading off to college), it’s always been on TV. 
I’ve never seen Law and Order…17 years strong. I am proud of that. Won’t watch that CSI bullshit either.
I like L&O. I like CSI, too (except Miami – specifically, David Caruso) but it doesn’t have that gritty street beat feel that L&O does. It’s still entertaining though.
Some stations in Canada that don’t run 24/7 still do that. Amazingly I saw one a couple of years ago that ran the exact same national anthem film they ran in the 70s.
There aren’t many of those stations left though.
This list would be a lot cooler if it was all actually true. But with at least half of the items being outright lies, it kind of loses it’s appeal.
Gah!
its appeal.
All right, so I guess I fall narrowly into the “they” group mentioned in the article.
Only two things on the list really made me scratch my head:
*12. Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines. * - This, to me, seems sort of absurd. I mean, lighting fires in an enclosed tube hurtling through the sky?
?57. Sara Lee has always made underwear. - I thought Sara Lee made pastries.
Never having flown I have no experience with this, but I imagine that, given that at one time smoking was permitted virtually anywhere (even streetcars) it’s plausable.
Apparently they’ve branched out, though I imagine those other brands haven’t quite made it to Canada yet. I don’t quite understand how their undergarments have become more notorious than their frozen confections, though – unless their panties are made with real cream cheese.
Um, which TV stations nowadays announce the conclusion of their broadcast day? The only time I have ever heard that phrase is in Toy Story 2.
I have. Many times.
Huh? What are they talking about?
No idea about these, either. Really, the majority of these don’t make much sense.
I’m 18, by the way.
(At first I wrote “since when have any TV stations …”; then I realized how ridiculous that sounded)
I assumed that they were referencing big-box stores á la WalMart.
When I was a kid Christmas lights used bulbs about 2" long, and they were always in a variety of colours. While I was still a kid it became popular for some people (in San Diego) to use all one colour (usually green or blue). Lights on the tree were similar, only smaller – maybe an inch and a half or less. ISTR that if a single bulb was bad the entire string (and any strings attached to it) would not light. I know that the little ‘mini-bulbs’ were like this (the ones that look like glass rods with a little glob at the end), but I don’t remember if it was true of the regular bulbs.