Americans and Russians have always cooperated better in orbit than on earth. (Class of 2017, #30)

Russians and Americans have always been living together in space. (Class of 2014, #43)

The U.S. and the Soviets have always been partners in space. (Class of 2006, #22)

Messrs. McBride and Nief are running out of ideas. That’s one of the impressions I get from going through multiple Mindset Lists looking for recurring topics, something most people who have not devoted themselves to the mockery and eventual destruction of the Beloit Mindset List have likely not done.

It should go without saying that Russians and Americans working together in space has nothing to do with the mindset of matriculating college students—because (1) the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project took place nearly 40 years ago and (2) most people just aren’t interested that much in the topic—but since Messrs. McBride and Nief don’t care about accuracy, facts, and such, they really have a lot of freedom to make up interesting and creative stuff. Instead we get the same items repeating every few years.

(Note also that the most recent list had just 60 items—or about one half item a week for each member of the Mindset team—rather than the 75 items that had become the standard.)

Has the task of coming up with several dozen “facts” about college freshmen each year proven so difficult for these two guys that they need to borrow from their previous lists? Or have they simply forgotten what was on their previous lists and are unable to find said lists on the microfilm they use to do their “research”?

The suggestion that the mindset of the Class of 2006 was shaped by knowledge involving citizens of a country that hadn’t existed since they were three-year-olds is just another piece of evidence that Messrs. McBride and Nief really can’t be bothered to get things right.