lowest common denominator

via let yourself feel. on Vimeo.

I was running a few days ago and went by a group of 16 year olds. It dawned on me that I was their age when they were born.

That realization, along with lists like this, make me feel VERY old. Keep in mind that most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college. It is the creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Emeritus Public Affairs Director Ron Nief. It is used around the world as the school year begins, as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation. (via http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/)

You can go to the link above to see all of them, but these are the ones that have the most personal impact.

1. For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
7. Earvin “Magic” Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
11. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
14. Text has always been hyper.
23. The European Union has always existed.
26. Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa.
36. We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
38. Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
50. Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
52. They have never been Saved by the Bell
64. CDs have never been sold in cardboard packaging.
68. Official racial classifications in South Africa have always been outlawed.
69. The NBC Today Show has always been seen on weekends.
73. Nobody has ever responded to “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

Everyone needs to read this.

You would think, then, that where they are invoked to draw a parallel or make a point, it would be done with a respect for the incalculable evil the Nazis represent. You would think people would tread carefully, not because of the potential insult to a given politician (they are big boys and girls) but because to do otherwise profanes the profound and renders trivial that which ought to be held sacred by anyone who regards himself as a truly human being.

But in modern America, unfortunately, rhetoric often starts over the top and goes up from there. So fine, George W. Bush is “a smirking chimp.” Fine, Barack Obama is “a Chicago thug.” We have a Constitution, after all, and it says we can say whatever we want. It doesn’t say it has to be intelligent.

And yes, you are even protected if you liken Obama or Bush to Hitler. Yet every time I hear that, it makes me cringe for what it says about our collective propensity for historical amnesia and our retarded capacity for reverence. Once upon a lifetime ago, six million people with DNA, names and faces just like you and I, were butchered with gleeful sadism and mechanistic dispatch. “Six million people.”

You and I may no longer respect one another, but is it asking too much that we still respect them?

via We need a history lesson about Nazis – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

From the great http://jeannr.tumblr.com

Holzer thought about the kiss for most of the day, and was at press time considering doing something nice for her, like buying some of those daisies she likes.

via Kiss With Wife Pretty Good | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.