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Every fall the professors at Beloit College publish their Mindset List, a dictionary of all the deeply ingrained cultural references that will make no sense to the bright-eyed students of the incoming class. It's a kind of time travel, to remind us how far we've come. This year's freshmen were typically born in 1991. That means, the authors explain, they have never used a card catalog to find a book; salsa has always outsold ketchup; women have always outnumbered men in college. There has always been blue Jell-O.
In 1991 we were fighting a war in Iraq, and still are; health care needed reforming, and still does. But before despairing that some things never change, consider how much has.
In 1991 the world watched a black motorist named Rodney King be beaten by L.A. cops, all of whom were acquitted; a majority of whites still disapproved of interracial marriage. Ask yourself, Would the people we were then have voted for a mixed-race President and a black First Lady?
That year, apartheid was repealed, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Dow broke 3000. The next year, the first commercial text message was sent; now there are more transmitted every day than there are people on the planet. In the time it took for toddlers to turn into teenagers, we decoded the human genome and everyone got a cell phone, an iPod, a GPS and a DVR. As the head-spinning viral video "Did You Know" informs us, the top 10 jobs in demand in 2010 did not exist six years ago, so "we're preparing kids for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies we haven't yet invented."
前三段均为例证，以Beloit College 的 Mindset List开篇，以大量的例证讲述人类科技文化，社会结构等方面变化之快，超乎人类自己的预测。8. Why does the author introduce the mindset list published by professor at Beloit College at the beginning of the passage? 仅考察第一段的例证。所以考生只需总结第一段前半部分的例证，并且重点总结第四段的开头。
We have managed, rather gracefully, far more change than we predicted would come; it turns out that our past's vision of the future was not visionary enough. This is often the case: reality puts prophecy to shame. "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote," declared Grover Cleveland in 1905. Harry Truman, in his 1950 State of the Union address to mark the midcentury, predicted that "our total national production 50 years from now will be four times as much as it is today." It turned out to be more than 33 times as large. "It will be gone by June," promised Variety in 1955 — talking about rock 'n' roll. "It will be years — not in my time — before a woman will become Prime Minister," declared Margaret Thatcher in 1969.
本段仍然属于真理越讲越明的写法。第一句意思稍嫌模糊，第二句意思就比较明确了：现实往往在预言之外。下文举了很多例证证明人们的预言往往会落空，有些事情曾经是那么的不可能，却也变成了现实。第九题问段首句的意思，只需对前两句进行解释，并稍微总结一下后半段的例证即可。
