4 ms·

> We don’t yet have comprehensive age data for the next Congress Am I understanding this correctly? As of January 2[0], the day before the new session began, n

by lkbm 8y ago

> We don’t yet have comprehensive age data for the next Congress Am I understanding this correctly? As of January 2[0], the day before the new session began, no one had yet compiled a full list of the ages of all members of Congress? That's baffling to me. Have an intern go look through the Wikipedia articles for each one of them. [0] There's no mention of the in the Baltimore Sun article, but https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/theres-so-many-different-things-how-technology-baffled-an-elderly-congress-in-2018/2019/01/02/f583f368-ffe0-11e8-83c0-b06139e540e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/theres-so-man... is dated 2019-01-02.

whatshisface 8y ago
An age-based criterion for computer knowledge would write off Donald Knuth, while counting a tween that only knew snapchat as an expert. To be honest I'm not sure how useful the list of ages would be.
- kvakil 8y ago
  I think that an age-based criterion would reflect that younger people (on average) have greater tech literacy. But I don't think Congresspeople reflect the general population, so I agree that using age is probably not the best idea.
- lkbm 8y ago
  I've not proposed any sort of cutoff, and don't particularly care about the specific ages. I'm just astounded by the claim that data on the ages of members of Congress isn't readily available to a journalist at a major newspaper.
  - masonic 8y ago
    Of course it's available, given that the birthdates all are. But, to paraphrase Barbie, "Math is hard." I'm guessing that a quick Google of "116th Congress ages" didn't turn up a single preformatted source in the desired format in the first few links.
    - lkbm 8y ago
      Having just spent a bit of time on this today[0], I realized there is one seat (NC district 9) that's still not set due to fraud allegations. Could be that's what they're referring to. [0] Just threw this together to start playing with hosting using S3: http://howoldiscongress.com/ http://howoldiscongress.com/ (Yes, I know that's absurd precision. wip and all.)

by lkbm 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago

An age-based criterion for computer knowledge would write off Donald Knuth, while counting a tween that only knew snapchat as an expert. To be honest I'm not sure how useful the list of ages would be.

kvakil 8y ago
I think that an age-based criterion would reflect that younger people (on average) have greater tech literacy. But I don't think Congresspeople reflect the general population, so I agree that using age is probably not the best idea.
lkbm 8y ago
I've not proposed any sort of cutoff, and don't particularly care about the specific ages. I'm just astounded by the claim that data on the ages of members of Congress isn't readily available to a journalist at a major newspaper.
- masonic 8y ago
  Of course it's available, given that the birthdates all are. But, to paraphrase Barbie, "Math is hard." I'm guessing that a quick Google of "116th Congress ages" didn't turn up a single preformatted source in the desired format in the first few links.
  - lkbm 8y ago
    Having just spent a bit of time on this today[0], I realized there is one seat (NC district 9) that's still not set due to fraud allegations. Could be that's what they're referring to. [0] Just threw this together to start playing with hosting using S3: http://howoldiscongress.com/ http://howoldiscongress.com/ (Yes, I know that's absurd precision. wip and all.)