But is all truly saved? Surely the phase-out of incandescent bulbs is good for the world — I mean, that a 100-watt bulb was so inefficient at turning energy into light that it could cook a cake as a byproduct is sort of its own argument against itself. Still, I can’t help feeling a little something may be lost with the change.

Rereading Sara Breselor’s fascinating piece last year in Salon about the psychology of why we love the toy, I was struck by how much the Easy-Bake’s charms are found in the idea that it allowed children to combine their imaginary world with the reality of making food that can actually be eaten. In that story, a chef, a clinical psychologist and a curator of a toy museum all agreed on that point, and I don’t think that will change.

But let’s face it: Toys are not just for kids. As I’ve spent time playing with my girlfriend’s crazy-adorable niece (Hi, Peanut!), I find that much of the joy of a good toy is in adults’ eyes — watching this tiny person do tiny person things, almost but not quite like how a grown person would do them. We watch them become engrossed, watch them explore the world of their imagination. We watch them stand or sit or tumble before us, but know that, in that moment, where they really are is in their fantasy. It’s getting a peek at that fantasy that draws me in, that sense of expansive creativity, of possibility that lives in children.

With the Easy-Bake Oven, that fantasy has launched kids into adulthood, and even the careers of award-winning chefs. The fact that behind all that is a regular old repurposed light bulb is kind of magical. The humdrum light bulb is a connection to the real world, which in turn makes the fantasy feel more fantastical — there’s a wonderful tension between something that’s so fake and so real at the same time. Swap out that $1.50, screw-it-in-yourself bulb for the new Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven’s supercalifragilistic proprietary heating element and that fragile tension between fantasy and appliance gets thrown a little out of kilter. Now it’s just a box that … does something.

Sure, maybe I’m overthinking this. I’m sure generations of kids will grow up with happy memories of the first time they made something to eat in their Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven. (They might not even grow up realizing how awful that name is.) And their parents will look on, just as happy to see their kids get excited as they are to have them not be screaming and running around the house. But I wonder how the good Mr. Howes would feel about this. Ronald Howes died almost a year ago to the day, at 83. But half a century before that, he once walked past a street vendor keeping his food warm under hot lights. And with that thought, with that bulb going off in his head, he drew up the original Easy-Bake Oven.

Kibwe Tavares’ short film “Robots of Brixton” imagines a world where sentient machines are given inhuman treatment by humans. An interesting memorial to the 1981 Brixton riots.

3. Joey Chestnuts, official winner of Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest

For the fifth year in a row, Joey “Jaws” Chestnuts won Nathan’s annual hot dog-scarfing contest in Coney Island. 

4. Actual winner of hot dog eating contest

Professional eater Takeru Kobayashi technically ate more ‘dogs on the Fourth than Joey (setting a world record with 69 buns and beef) , but was considered ineligible for the Coney Island event since he won’t sign an exclusive contract with Major League Eating. 

5. Twin infants sync laughter

Well, this is almost as creepy/adorable as those talking babies. 

The most fascinating of these photos is called “Pig Cafeteria”:

The caption reads:

“The Pig Cafeteria” was an exhibit produced by the Department of Agriculture to educate farmers about new methods of farming and raising livestock — specifically, what to feed pigs so that they would be healthy and profitable.

So maybe it’s just poor word choice, because when I see Wilbur here licking his lips and holding out his plate at a Pig Cafeteria, I assume that he will be in for a sad and delicious shock, smothered in barbeque sauce. But maybe Pig Cafeterias are just cafeterias for pigs, not serving them — the way we call where kids eat lunch “Human Cafeterias.”

Definitely check out the rest of the exhibit up in the Times, especially the poster demanding “Eat The Carp”:

Or the kind nurses that come to your home and tell you about the benefits of this “dairy product”:

Man, the past looks totally terrifying and not at all tasty. I’ll take Reagan’s “Catsup is a vegetable” decision* over carp demands or pushy milk women any day. 

*Yes, I know it didn’t actually go down quite like that.

But how “friendly” is Ronald? A new study done by outside marketing group Ace Metric found that in a survey group of 500, an overwhelming amount found a guy with big red lips and white greasepaint more creepy than cute.

McDonald’s refuses to give up on Ronald, though, and its defense on why it needs to keep a terrifying clown as its mascot would be charming if it weren’t so ridiculous and backward. Below, five of the responses McDonald’s has given for keeping Ronald on the payroll.

1. Complaint: “It’s really remarkable how often I saw the word ‘creepy’ [in regards to Ronald],” says the V.P. of a company that conducted the survey.

McDonald’s response: “For everyone who may feel that way, there are more who feel the opposite.”

2. Complaint: Ronald McDonald is an evil clown.

McDonald’s response: “He is a force for good,” says McD’s CEO, Jim Skinner.

3. Complaint: Too many damn clowns running around.

McDonald’s response: “There’s only one Ronald,” McDonald’s chief creative officer Marlena Peleo-Lazar said in response to several questions about how many actors portray the smiling clown.

4. Complaint: He is hurting a brand image that is trying to be more adult … like Starbucks.

McDonald’s response: He is the brand image. “It would be almost as if the Geico gecko disappeared, or the Aflac duck,” says one marketing strategist. God forbid.

5. Complaint: Ronald encourages childhood obesity.

McDonald’s response: Around 2004, McDonald’s christened Ronald as a “balanced, active lifestyles ambassador,” and stuck him in commercials where he trained for the Olympics. He got workout clothes. He got a tuxedo. He moved from McDonaldLand into the real world. 

You know who can also move into the real world after being trapped in a fantasy land? Freddy Krueger.

It’s actually in CAI’s favor to have a scary mascot act as a deterrent for children trying to buy fries. It should be thanking McDonald’s for keeping such a creepy figure right in front of the golden arches.

Following in Hawaii’s footsteps, Washington, Oregon and, most significantly, California have introduced statewide legislation that would make it illegal — and highly fineable — to serve or even possess shark’s fin. (Hawaii’s law calls for fines of $5,000 to $15,000 for even first-time offenders.)

Ban supporters talk about the trade’s inhumane treatment of sharks and an outsize environmental impact. The “Ew-ick-how-can-you-do-that” argument is that fins are largely harvested by cutting them off of live sharks, then dumping the shark back in in the water to die. But the more big-picture concern is about the scale of finning: researchers estimate that 73 million sharks are killed every year to feed an exploding demand in fins by a huge, growing middle class in China. Some scientists estimate that ocean shark populations are just 10 percent of what they used to be, and there’s no telling what kind of impact that can have. As Dan Cartamil, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said on the KPBS radio show “These Days,” “You take away the sharks, and, for example, many coral reef ecosystems become degraded. There are suddenly lots of stingrays, because now they have no natural predators, and then they may eat all the oysters, which is a commercial fishery.” And on and on. So the current scale of shark finning is a real problem.

But then I think, again, of my grandfather, and the night he took a teenage me to a nondescript, fluorescent-lit noodle shop in an undistinguished, vaguely smelly part of Macau. Walking past folding tables with diners on stools, going through an unmarked door behind a curtain, we found ourselves suddenly in a plush, one-table dining room, with relatively regal carpeting and a tablecloth of bright red, the color of celebration. I remember the dinner being wonderful, and that the strands of shark’s fin in the soup were thicker than spaghetti, a sign of quality … and extravagant expense. And it became clear that the room, the table, the whole dinner — so strange and luxurious amid such undistinguished circumstances — was built around the event of that soup; the metaphor of that soup was undeniable. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that much of my grandfather’s life was built around that soup, built around the idea that he could show the world and himself that he’d finally made it, that he could literally feed his family his success. For him, and tens of millions like him, that feeling of satisfaction must be unparalleled.

And so foes of the ban, including Chinese American California state Sen. Leland Yee, are tempted to say things like, “This is an attack on Asian culture.” And Jon Kauffman of SF Weekly sharply noted that it’s not hard to see “an anti-Chinese subtext in the ban,” with the language of the debate rife with “echoes of Americans’ fear of the rising Chinese middle class, and the persistent suspicion and disgust many Americans feel toward other cultures’ foods.”

But, Kauffman continues:

“Globally, we’ve reached the point at which the collapse of an ecosystem has to take precedence over one culture’s culinary heritage. No matter who the primary ‘market’ is, overconsumption is taking sharks — and bluefin tuna, and Atlantic cod, and hundreds of other species — away from all of us, and we all have a right to demand action. The situation is becoming drastic, and drastic, across-the-board bans are warranted.”

If the science is correct, I’d have to agree. (Sorry, grandpa. Really. I’m sorry.) I mean, the cultural import of the dish is, to be frank, as much about the demonstration of status as anything else, and there is no limit to the creativity of aspirational culture to come up with the next big status symbol. I mean, go ahead and buy another pair of Prada shoes instead of taking me out for shark’s fin. It’s fine. I don’t mind, and after a while, you’re not going to mind either. After all, the nature of status symbols is that the more they’re attained, the shallower their actual meaning, and the more attractive the next, other thing eventually becomes.

And cultures evolve. As Judy Ki, of a pro-ban group called Asian Pacific Americans Ocean Harmony Alliance, said, “I personally don’t think our culture is that fragile that it would fall apart without one little delicacy. My grandmother’s feet were bound. That was part of ‘our culture,’ and I’m very glad we’ve said that’s wrong.” (It’s worth noting that several California Chinese American legislators support the ban — and the bill was originally co-sponsored by a Chinese American assemblyman.)

But there is something disconcerting about this ban. A Chinese American chef, Jonathan Wu, noted, “It’s a tough call, but I support the ban. While we are at it, I’d also ban Caspian caviar and bluefin tuna [Caspian sturgeon and bluefin tuna are both considered endangered by many scientists] until their fisheries recover — no doubt, that would raise an uproar in certain other cultural communities.”

And that’s the thing: It’s not that this ban is “racist” as some have put it, it’s that it’s the kind of thing that smells a bit of cynical political posturing, scoring cheap environmental points because no politician is going to lose any votes that matter. Get rid of a grody-sounding food that only the Chinese are stupid enough to save up their money for? Easy! Try to take away the endangered tuna from voters’ Friday night sushi date, though, and there’ll be hell to pay. And don’t even think about doing anything about factory farming, the cheap-meat industry that is unequivocally ruining huge swaths of our ecology and our health. It’s not a good state of affairs when we can easily get up a head of steam behind laws that take away others’ pleasures, but refuse to even take a hard look at our own.