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.
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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?
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That year, apartheid was repealed, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Dow broke 3000.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."

前三段均為例證，以Beloit College 的 Mindset List開(kāi)篇，以大量的例證講述人類科技文化，社會(huì)結(jié)構(gòu)等方面變化之快，超乎人類自己的預(yù)測(cè)。8. Why does the author introduce the mindset list published by professor at Beloit College at the beginning of the passage? 僅考察第一段的例證。所以考生只需總結(jié)第一段前半部分的例證，并且重點(diǎn)總結(jié)第四段的開(kāi)頭。
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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.
本段仍然屬于真理越講越明的寫(xiě)法。第一句意思稍嫌模糊，第二句意思就比較明確了：現(xiàn)實(shí)往往在預(yù)言之外。下文舉了很多例證證明人們的預(yù)言往往會(huì)落空，有些事情曾經(jīng)是那么的不可能，卻也變成了現(xiàn)實(shí)。第九題問(wèn)段首句的意思，只需對(duì)前兩句進(jìn)行解釋，并稍微總結(jié)一下后半段的例證即可。

Leaders rely on the future as a vaccine against the present. The Soviets have put a man in space? "I believe we should go to the moon," President Kennedy announces. "I have a dream," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declares as the world around him burns. Maybe the promise is realized, even surpassed; maybe it keeps receding, pulling us along. "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time," Abraham Lincoln supposedly observed. Which is true for those in charge of creating it but maybe not for the rest of us. When we pause and look back, we get to see the past's future, know how the story turned out. Did we rise to the occasion? Did we triumph? Did we blink?
本段講述恰恰是因?yàn)槲磥?lái)不可以預(yù)測(cè)，所以政治家往往靠它給人們不切實(shí)際的想象。第十題問(wèn)道本段首句的句意，只需對(duì)本段進(jìn)行總結(jié)即可。

The past's power comes from experience, the lessons it dares us to dismiss on the grounds that maybe things will be different this time. The future's power is born of experiment, and the endless grudge match between fear and hope. We are having a dozen simultaneous conversations right now about change: in our institutions, our culture, our treatment of the planet and of one another.
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It's tempting to just stand stock-still and squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the moment to pass, or else hoard canned goods and assume the worst. This has been an awfully ugly summer of argument, and you'd be forgiven for concluding that we've lost our will to face or fix anything. We'll just dance with the devils we know, thank you. But if you look past Washington, past Wall Street, turn down the volume and go outside and walk around, you'll find the parcels of grace, of ingenuity and enterprise — people riding change like a skateboard, speeding off a ramp, twisting, flipping, somehow landing with a rush of wind and wheels — and wonder that it somehow hasn't killed us yet.
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When members of the freshman class of 2027 look back at our future, what's likely to surprise them most? Will they marvel that gays were once not allowed to marry — or that they ever were? That we baited while the planet warmed, or that we acted to save it? That we protected the poor, or empowered them, or ignored them? That we lived within our means, or beyond them? We'll make our choices one day at a time, but our kids will judge our generation for what we generate, and what we leave undone.

8. Why does the author introduce the mindset list published by professor at Beloit College at the beginning of the passage?

9. What does the author mean by saying "our past's vision of the future was not visionary enough"?

10. Explain the sentence "Leaders rely on the future as a vaccine against the present." Make your comments.

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