Natural Experiment: Idiot Research

In the organisation where I work, it appears that (for a given subset at least), we have a Directly Measurable Idiot Factor of roughly 1%. It goes without saying, if you know me at all, that this is better than I expected.

"Idiot" is here defined as the kind of person who hits reply-all when a routine but esoteric administrative request has been accidentally sent to a mailing list 9,187 names long.

Bear in mind that the last idiot to send a reply-all stating "this is not for me" had already had the opportunity to read all of the other 86 replies, plus the original. In the table below, I have not been able to show this deepening of idiocy over time. To protect the guilty, I have not recorded his name. Except in my personal records.

Total number of individuals on mailing list used in error: 9,187.
Total number of reply-all messages received in my inbox: 87.

Idiots to Total: 0.95%.

An attempt to classify the messages:	Count	Description of classification
Friendly / baffled / neutral / mildly annoyed idiocy	49	"Sorry,this request is not for me, I think you have made a mistake ...", "Please remove me from this list", "I am not too sure why I have received this email" ...including blank emails repeating these types
Recursive idiocy	25	"I'm replying all to say PLEASE STOP replying all!"
Angry idiocy	1	PLEASE USE CORRECT EMAIL (other individual's email)
Clueless idiocy	1	"I think someone may have a virus!"
Constructive idiocy	2	"I can do this if you tell me how", "I have forwarded this to ..."
Attempts at amends for idiocy	3	Recall messages
Apologies for idiocy	1	From sender of original message
Opportunistic attention-seeking - basic	4	Attempted joke, irony, contentless wind-up responses to other idiocy
Opportunistic attention-seeking - advanced	1	Joke is funny
Total	87

Menuda Milonga

This milonga is around once a month (calendar) in one of two venues - Cranbourne, Dorset, or Ringwood, Hampshire. Organised by Richard Slade and Esther Pellejero. Times vary, and you should check the website for the next event; it may be an evening milonga, 19:30 to 23:30, or in the afternoon from 16:00 till around 20:00.

The Class: There isn't one. This milonga is aimed at people who can already dance, are mostly willing to travel some distance, and want to not be messed about by the DJ.

Layout and Atmosphere: There are two venues. The one I've been to is Cecil Memorial Hall in Cranbourne. It's a lovely village hall with a high A-shaped roof, a stage at the far end, a very good floor. There are French windows along the right hand side as you come in, with yellowish curtains, and there's a large hatch leading to the kitchen. You help yourself to refreshments by walking out of the hall and into the kitchen, but you still have a good view of what's going on in the hall and if you keep an eye out, it's perfectly possible to get a dance while you're making tea or eating a biscuit. Rectangular tables are set around all the walls with dark blue tablecloths. In places you can walk behind them, but not all the way round. The DJ has a table on the stage and there is a smallish, unobtrusive "now playing" display. Lighting is good; the good quality of the hall means light can be high enough for everyone to see properly without revealing anything depressing. The warm wood of the floor and ceiling give the whole room a nice look.

Hospitality: Good. You are greeted with joy and can help yourself to plenty of coffee, tea and biscuity things or similar in the large kitchen. On my first visit there were all sorts of other canapé-like things as well. Clean well-lit loos with extra coathooks are off the entrance hall.


Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: Just social dancing.

What I thought of the DJing: Richard Slade DJd. I really enjoyed it on both visits. Traditional, tandas of 4, milonga and vals in 3s. Happy cortinas, long enough. Richard is fairly new to the DJing and doing a bit of experimentation, so I'm sure there's plenty of room for refinement but there was nothing daft and the most demanding of my partners had only minor quibbles. He seems to be discriminating about which feedback he listens to, which is what you want. There's an unobtrusive display that names the current track over some lovely photos of social dancing.

Getting in: £7. Includes refreshments (tea, coffee and biscuits). Non-dancers free.

Getting there and getting home: You have to drive - directions on the website. I was a passenger with a party starting from Bristol; we left at 12, stopped for an hour's lunch, and arrived at about twenty to four.

The website: http://www.menudamilonga.com/. Gives you all the essential information on the home page.

How it went:  I had a great time. Partly because I and several of my favourite partners had danced for about seven hours at a party the previous night, so I was still in the zone. And I'd travelled with good company, and there was more meeting us there. But also because it's a really nice milonga.

Most of the people there understood the codes that are published on the website. If you don't agree with them, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go there. It was almost always orderly, with good flow, and really nice. I had one tanda slightly messed up by a zigzagger between lanes (Fresedo does not meld well with the desire to elbow one's neighbour), and some consternation was caused by the arrival of an individual notorious for being extremely tiresome to share a floor with; but Richard stalked him for a while and he started to more or less behave. During the crowded part of the evening there was a bit of standing through the cortinas and blocking the view of people sitting down, but it got less so. I think there were enough chairs for everyone, or almost everyone, to sit down, but that might not have been true at the most crowded stage. I had no difficulty keeping my seat.

Unless you live nearby, it would be a long way to drive on your own if you don't know anybody: it makes sense if you are used to travelling fairly long distances for your tango and you know some of the south-west corridor people who do the same. I know that when I travel for tango, unless there is a temporarily spare leader among my acquaintance (as there was this time) I will probably always have to wait out the first hour while people dance in couples and with people they haven't seen for ages, and this is a nice enough milonga that that's not too annoying. I've been there twice, and on the occasion when I arrived 'cold' I had to work harder to keep a level head, but some of the dances I was waiting for had such lovely balloons attached that the balance of the evening was extremely positive. I was quite happy at the times when I was just sitting in my spot and listening, and there were plenty of people who were nice to watch. It's a beautiful milonga.

How to make a heart-shaped boiled egg

For those of you who can use such things.

Anna the Red: How to make a heart-shaped egg

You'll need an egg, a piece of stiffish paper, a chopstick or something roughly the same shape, and two rubber bands. Hat tip Desigrub via Malcolm Eggs.

What Beginners Want? Really?

Every now and then I see remarks vaguely in this form, more often than seems justified by any evidence that I know of:

"I suspect/believe/am sure most beginners were like me/you/her/him and attracted to the big flash moves you see on stage and screen ..."

Well, I wasn't that beginner, and I don't see any grounds for saying "most".

I'd seen a tango performance which wasn't of very high quality, and did include some of that sort of stuff, but what I was attracted to was the way the couple were wearing relatively ordinary clothing, weren't faking cheesy smiles (nor, in that particular case, cheesy fake foreplay) and seemed to be principally concerned with each other rather than the audience or with wiggling around. I had no dance experience, I just wanted to get out and dance. I chose Argentine Tango because even a fairly bad performance looked so much less fake and less flash than any kind of ballroom performance. And I guessed that a social form existed, which I might take up. I had very few preconceptions about what it might be like, except that obviously, as a matter of common sense, it would not be very like the stage form; the whole point of going to classes was to find out.

Maybe "most beginners" are one way or the other, or maybe they are very diverse. You can't just extrapolate your own mind to "most" of a population.

How would you even tell? You could, of course, ask them on Day One, but it seems unlikely to me that they're going to say anything more specific than "I saw X and I thought it was amazing". You can't assume from that, that it was the big flash moves in X that attracted them. When you don't have any dance experience, you don't even perceive anything specific about what sort of moves were done in something you saw. If a particular movement "attracted" you, you don't know why. All you get is some overall emotional effect that X managed to communicate, and this could be almost anything. If you ask someone to articulate that on Day One from a position of total ignorance, you put them on the spot, defending a position, and fix their ideas in a way that is unlikely to be helpful. What's the point?

If most of the people who turn up to a class that's intended as social-style tango, really are unshakeably "attracted to the big flash moves you see on stage and screen", and totally unwilling to consider anything that comes from the real person standing in front of them, I would also want to at least briefly look at how the class was marketed, and who to. Did that just play along with a main-stream-media stereotype, or did it try to say anything else?

Yes, there is lots of stuff out there making people think they want a tango class when really they just want to be on stage. It's possible that this really does totally overwhelm all resistance. That could be the truth. But I'm sceptical. There are lots of different people out there, the ones who didn't turn up as well as the ones who did.

Don't Eat Noodles on the Hong Kong Subway

Language Log is always totally fascinating. Today, Victor Mair's admirably informative post about linguistic aspects of the politics of Hong Kong - a subject I would never otherwise have heard anything about - contains the following aside:

I should mention that Kong's tirade against Hong Kong was prompted by viral videos of a conflict between local passengers on a Hong Kong Metro train and mainlanders who contravened regulations by eating noodles on the subway.

I wonder if it's specifically noodles, or is it eating anything at all that is forbidden on the Hong Kong subway? On the Underground we only have sweet cartoony posters saying "Don't Eat Smelly Food". It would be fairly difficult to eat noodles on the Underground, but I suppose it could be done. Maybe the Hong Kong metro has a smoother ride?

A Rose

A rather old rose, taken with my mother's camera.

The Light Temple

The Light Temple - Saturdays in Shoreditch, 9pm - 2am. Sorry I haven't got around to this one before, it's quite popular, it's just that I can rarely do Saturdays.


The Class: They usually have an beginner or improver-level class with Pablo and Naomi beforehand. Sometimes they have a class with guest teachers.

Layout and Atmosphere: It's dark. There are coloured lights, in a quite large white-walled cuboid space that seems to have been some sort of church, although of an odd shape and orientation. You come in at one side of a large uncurtained stage, and you can sit, or rather nest, on there, with cushions. But you'll be very close to the speakers. The DJ booth is on the other side of that. The opposite side has a gallery, with chairs underneath it, in two pockets, with a closed part between them fronted by small tables and chairs. There are some benches right at the back. There are a few small round tables, and more chairs, along the other two walls. What light there is, varies between blue and red. Cabeceo is feasible if you sit in the right place, know the person fairly well, and have good eyesight, but generally you are more likely to get verbal requests. It has a youngish, excited sort of vibe, and it's not at all difficult for a non-regular to get dances. The floor is good, if slightly sloping towards one corner, and large.

Hospitality: Good. There's a table up in the gallery that serves as a bar. They don't do gin-and-tonic, but a small glass of wine is £4. Water was available at no charge. Sometimes they also have food beforehand, especially in summer. The loos are roomy, well-lit and in good condition - entrance under the gallery.

Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: A couple abandoned the ample space behind me and my partner, cut the corner, and made their way into the very small space between us and the couple in front. After about half a minute, they found that the space so made was insufficient. So he executed a sort of giant soltada without the turn, and gestured in the direction of dance. The couple divided, passed on either side of my friends in front and two other couples, and rejoined each other in the corner beyond, where they remained for some time. I thought that was quite interesting. I don't go there often enough to say for sure how unusual it is.

What I thought of the DJing: Pablo, the regular DJ, plays tandas of 4, with 3s for milonga and vals, and the cortinas are long enough. The DJing is appropriate for the tastes and dance style of most of the regulars. If you like the modern cover versions of things like El Huracán better than the originals, you'll love it; it's not my thing at all. There was a lovely Biagi tanda near the start, and I think a couple of really nice Canaro ones. And a lot of what I classify broadly as Pugliese knockoffs with high sound quality that don't make me want to dance even slightly; but there is a school of thought that really likes this stuff. If you can deduce from my description that that's you, try this venue.

The sound is mainly from two big speakers on the stage, so it is louder when you're close to them, but I had no problems hearing it anywhere, and I think the long curtains hanging from the gallery limit the interference of voice noise.

Getting in: £10 for the class and milonga, £4 for the milonga only. I came in just before the end of the class and I don't actually remember which I was charged. £4 is very cheap for London.

Getting there and getting home: It takes me 12 minutes to walk there from Liverpool Street, or you can hop on a bus for a couple of stops. It's more or less next door to Shoreditch Church. From Liverpool Street, come out of the Bishopsgate exit and walk left. Just follow the road. You'll pass the Light Bar, which is where they have the milonga on Tuesdays, after about six minutes. The place to cross the road is just after you get to the Majestic wine warehouse. Keep following the road till you get to Shoreditch Church, and follow the fence right around. As you do so, you'll make your way through the crowd spilling out from the George and Dragon on the corner, and you'll see a sign on the church fence - follow the arrow down the little street and the entrance is on the left, currently half-concealed by boarded scaffolding, before you get to the residential bit. I'm told parking can be a bit difficult, so you might want to plan for your space if you're driving. But on this evening my friends who were driving had no problems.

Many trains run from Liverpool Street till about 1am, but since this milonga starts rather late, if you like it you will probably want to stay till the end. In that case there are many buses, but keep in mind that a LOT of people try to leave Shoreditch on buses between about half past one and 2am. You may have to wait for an hour or more before one goes past that has space for you. Consider walking back to the bus station at Liverpool Street, which is what I should have done both times this happened to me.

The website: http://www.tangothelight.com/ is 100% Flash, but once you get in, it has the information you need. Or use the Facebook Thing for announcements.

How it went: I really like the young cheerful vibe that it has. On all my (few) visits there's been plenty of space, which most of the dancers were keen to make use of. The level of bumps has varied so widely that I can't really say what's normal. It may well depend on the class and the crowd. It is very dark, though. Consider light-coloured or shiny clothing. If you're under the gallery and not in the front row or along the side, you can't really be seen from anywhere else. If you are there, you're very exposed.

If you're inexperienced and you need to get some dances in, then I think it would be fun and fine, especially if you took the class beforehand. You might also be interested in the "L-Plate" milonga specially for beginners in a second room, off the entrance hall. It looked quite nice in there, when I came in - I forgot about it and regretted not investigating further. More experienced dancers have a very good chance of finding agreeable partners if the other aspects suit them.

I'm unlikely to become a regular here because the DJing style doesn't suit me at all, and I'm not crazy about the Shoreditch night bus experience. But I like the youthful feel and the hospitality and the space itself. It's also cheap and accessible. In this case I was there with some friends and stayed to the end, having a very enjoyable evening.