Faced with an assignment to make a plush night light, I thought, “Why light?” and brainstormed reasons for a stuffed toy to light up. In a glowworm toy, for instance, the light mimics nature. I’d been reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and this got me thinking about the chain of refrigeration, labor, and irradiation involved in American beef production. So I thought, glowing irradiated meat! I know that irradiated meat doesn’t glow, and neither does toxic waste unless it’s in a cartoon, but plush toys typically represent cartoon characters anyway, so it made sense: Plush Irradiated Sirloin.
