Questions That I am not Sure How to Answer
In the past, I have wondered such things as, "What's the farthest anybody has ever run at one time," and, "What's the hardest mountain in the world to climb?"* These are questions with clear, well-defined answers, answers which are obviously of great interest to lots of people out there, but I have no idea how to get there from here.
What's even worse, even if the Head Librarian of the Internet did know the answer, how would he classify it so that curious parties could look it up themselves? These are little bits of trivia that fit in no known encyclopedic category. You could classify them under "fun facts," and I'm sure someone has, but that provides no help for looking them up. Even using all my internet tricks, I don't know how to find the answers. (I still don't know the answer to the running question. On the other hand, I found out that the hardest mountain in the world to climb is none other than K2. Completely by accident, I found it out.)
I mention this because I have been wondering: Do any US Congressmen smoke? And if not, who was the last smoker in Congress? I'm not talking about port and cigars with the captains of industry at Delmonico's, but just everyday cigarettes. I know smoking is no longer "cool", and congressmen have to stay carefully on top of the latest trends to remain in office (that is why you never see Senators playing with Tamagotchis anymore), but smoking is also a really hard habit to quit. If there was a representative who smoked ten years ago, he's not likely to have stopped. Unless his district suddenly swung against tobacco in the last decade, cigarettes just aren't a voting issue.
Perhaps all the congressmen who used to smoke have simply retired for other reasons. They presumably have worse health than the average lawmaker, so maybe they all just died. Still, it's hard to believe that nobody who smokes has been elected to take their places. You wouldn't expect the representative from Asthmatown, CA to smoke, but in some parts of the country, smoking must be a regionalistic sacrament. Am I supposed to believe that the congressmen from central Virginia and North Carolina don't want to support their hometown industries? You might as well expect to see a congressman from Jamaica who didn't drink rum.
So assume there are legislators who smoke. Where would you find them? They don't list it on their webpages. It's hard enough to find one who smokes at all; we can't expect them to be proud of it. On the other hand, their websites don't say, "I don't smoke" either. Probably they don't want to alienate the nicotine vote. Google turns up nothing for "congressmen who smoke," so there's not some black list on an anti-smoking website somewhere. I only have so many tricks. Typing congressman and smoke into a search engine just produces pages of anti-smoking blather. Is it safe to assume that if a representative writes anti-smoking press releases, he doesn't smoke? I don't know.
I guess I'm going to have to shelve this wonder for the moment, and hope the answer comes to me in time. In the past few months, I unexpectedly discovered that one congressman writes raps, and that there is such a thing as Second District Trivia. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? The future is bright, my friends, and the facts are just around the corner.
What's even worse, even if the Head Librarian of the Internet did know the answer, how would he classify it so that curious parties could look it up themselves? These are little bits of trivia that fit in no known encyclopedic category. You could classify them under "fun facts," and I'm sure someone has, but that provides no help for looking them up. Even using all my internet tricks, I don't know how to find the answers. (I still don't know the answer to the running question. On the other hand, I found out that the hardest mountain in the world to climb is none other than K2. Completely by accident, I found it out.)
I mention this because I have been wondering: Do any US Congressmen smoke? And if not, who was the last smoker in Congress? I'm not talking about port and cigars with the captains of industry at Delmonico's, but just everyday cigarettes. I know smoking is no longer "cool", and congressmen have to stay carefully on top of the latest trends to remain in office (that is why you never see Senators playing with Tamagotchis anymore), but smoking is also a really hard habit to quit. If there was a representative who smoked ten years ago, he's not likely to have stopped. Unless his district suddenly swung against tobacco in the last decade, cigarettes just aren't a voting issue.
Perhaps all the congressmen who used to smoke have simply retired for other reasons. They presumably have worse health than the average lawmaker, so maybe they all just died. Still, it's hard to believe that nobody who smokes has been elected to take their places. You wouldn't expect the representative from Asthmatown, CA to smoke, but in some parts of the country, smoking must be a regionalistic sacrament. Am I supposed to believe that the congressmen from central Virginia and North Carolina don't want to support their hometown industries? You might as well expect to see a congressman from Jamaica who didn't drink rum.
So assume there are legislators who smoke. Where would you find them? They don't list it on their webpages. It's hard enough to find one who smokes at all; we can't expect them to be proud of it. On the other hand, their websites don't say, "I don't smoke" either. Probably they don't want to alienate the nicotine vote. Google turns up nothing for "congressmen who smoke," so there's not some black list on an anti-smoking website somewhere. I only have so many tricks. Typing congressman and smoke into a search engine just produces pages of anti-smoking blather. Is it safe to assume that if a representative writes anti-smoking press releases, he doesn't smoke? I don't know.
I guess I'm going to have to shelve this wonder for the moment, and hope the answer comes to me in time. In the past few months, I unexpectedly discovered that one congressman writes raps, and that there is such a thing as Second District Trivia. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? The future is bright, my friends, and the facts are just around the corner.
posted by apk01004 at 1:46 PM
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