I’ve previously remarked on the Guardianista tradition of sliding one’s ass over any unattended blame and incubating it as one’s own. So far as I can make out, this is done for some kind of autoerotic purpose. Documenting each and every instance of the phenomenon is, alas, a task too far for any sane being, but a couple of recent examples caught my eye.

First, Dmitri Vitaliev informs readers of Comment is Free:

With the world’s spotlight on China and widespread criticism of its repressive actions, one should not forget that the knowledge and technology used to create the world’s most prominent Big Brother society was designed in the west, often by the very same corporations whose advertisements on TV take up the time between the relay race and the javelin competition.

By much the same logic, Guardian readers will no doubt be happy to blame China for half the wars of the last thousand years on grounds that the Chinese invented gunpowder. No?

Meanwhile, associate editor Seumas Milne looks to events in Georgia and offers the following, er, analysis:

By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power.

As Tim Worstall points out, Milne also seems to think that reducing Russia’s control over fuel movements from other independent states is some kind of NeoCon provocation. Such is the logic of MilneWorld™.

Ladies, there’s been a miracle breakthrough. Mary Huang creates “transformative fashions” – specifically, luminous knitwear. 

Readers with “a sense of magic and mystery” can own a scarf and dress embedded with two dozen LEDs. Thankfully, both items can be powered by batteries or from the mains for extra fabulousness. And, as Ms Huang points out, “When not being worn, the pieces double in function as lamps, avoiding the fate of hanging neglected in a closet.”

Thank the gods. The Battlestar Galactica toaster has arrived.

For a mere $65 you can now scorch Cylons onto bread. Sadly, the device lacks the familiar roving red light and ominous hum. And it seems that Pop-Tarts may be incompatible with the technology.

Related: Conscience in Extremis, Things to Come, Big Hair and Ray Guns.

Further to this, a few more thoughts on postmodernist prose.

It’s sometimes argued, not always convincingly, that the opaque and technocratic language of “critical theory” is necessary in order to “interrogate [the] tacit presumptions [of common sense] and provoke new ways of looking at a familiar world.” And, furthermore, that “some of the most trenchant social criticisms are often expressed through difficult and demanding language.” The implicit gist of such claims – which are remarkably short on persuasive examples – is that if you find this kind of language “difficult” it’s your own damn fault for being an unsophisticated heathen. A version of this argument goes something like this: “You wouldn’t mock specialists in quantum chromodynamics just because their work can be difficult to follow, so why don’t you give theorists of rhetoric, who are every bit as clever and important, the same benefit of the doubt?”

There is, of course, a difference between prose that’s difficult out of necessity – because it deals with fine or esoteric distinctions or describes ideas that are primarily conceptualised in mathematical terms – and prose that’s politically loaded and gratuitously difficult for less edifying reasons. As, for instance, when Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden insist that clear writing is bourgeois and ideologically contaminated, being as it is, “the approved mode of expression for the society and values of the newly empowered middle class.”

There are plenty of writers who grapple with technical or unobvious ideas, and the good ones make it as easy as possible for the reader to follow the thinking and determine whether or not it’s sound – and if not, to determine where the doubt or error is. Such-and-such a mistake happens there. Or, this doesn’t follow from that. Or this other thing could be the case. This preference for transparency starts a process of critical thinking, or is at least amenable to it. It also entails honesty and the risk of public correction, as opposed to posturing and the hope one won’t be rumbled. This is a matter of no small importance, especially if the ideas in question are supposed to justify an adamant political worldview. Clarity invites dispute, possibly refutation, and refutation of one’s politics can, for some, be intolerable.

Toe Jam. Amusing nakedness. Let it load. (Low-res version here.) // CERN rap. The Large Hadron Collider gets superfly. // LHC centrefolds. (h/t, Andy.) // The mathematics of origami. // More wall-climbing robots of note. // Photographs of Iceland. // Britain, from above. With GPS ‘trails’. // A bubble map of Olympic medals. // The Hand Drawn Map Association. (h/t, Coudal.) // The Egyptian Unique Moustache Association. See if you can spot where it stops being funny. // An interview with Geert Wilders. Michael Buerk, aghast, repeats usual guff. // Calligraphy with light. // Lightmark. // Total solar eclipse, China. // Japanese sex museums. // When viruses get sick. // More ancient cities of colour. // Bug sculptures. How to make your own. (h/t, Drawn!) // One man and his dog. // Give yourself elf ears. // Martha Nussbaum kicks sand in the face of Judith Butler. // Then Peter Risdon swipes her towel. “It is always a pleasure to read a self-refuting argument.” // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Ms Marlene Dietrich.