Toast racks are the most useless and pretentious item of kitchenware in existence.
Their purpose seems to be the elegant serving of toast on one's breakfast table, and perhaps to compensate for excessive buttering. So why is the humble toast rack to be counted among the myriad banes of humanity?
Well, aside from the strange vanity of having a separate ornament to perform the job of the humble plate, the true evil is this; your toast rack is a cleverly disguised cooling device! Ask any engineer to design you a passive tool for the cooling of small rectangular objects. He will surely produce something with the definite essence of toast racks.
Why were these oddities ever conceived? I suspect the Victorians and their vulgar but forgivable obsession with elegant uselessness. Their clinging survival may be attributed to the class-conscious aspirationalists. Neither the dustbin man nor the wealthy tycoon has any time for the toast rack, but the average suburbanite may consider them quite delightful.
Cold toast. It's not posh and it's not clever.