Hot Dog?

So this is a pretty obvious question. Why is it called a hot dog? I'm told that there are some gross things that get put into the hot dog, but I've never been told it was actual dog. I assume the history of this food is pretty disgusting since I come from a place where dogs are closer to family members than they are to food. But even if original hot dogs were made from dog meat why do we still call them that when I'm sure its been over a century since someone in North America considered eating dog meat for nutrition. Maybe we should look into a name change for this food. Someone will need to be a little more creative with the naming process this time too, I don't think hot beef or hot pork is going to sell.

While I'm on the topic of things that we don't eat, it just recently dawned on me that there is something mysterious about our canine friends. It has to do with 'dog years'. I was told as a child that dog years and human years were different, specifically that 1 human year equals 7 dogs years. Now I blindly accepted this as a child and just thought "oh that just means that dogs have approximately 1/7th the life span of a human, and also mature faster than we do" (Josh age 3). Then just a few days ago I remembered that a year is not a measure of maturity in an organism, but a measure of time. A year can either be: 1. the amount of time it takes for an object to travel around the sun, or 2. a calendar year as used by the Gregorian calendar, or 365 days. Now using these definitions how can a dog year be different from a human year? Obviously we can throw out the second definition as the difference, because they are dogs, there is no way dogs could invent a calendar system. So clearly the difference between a dog year and a human year has to be due to the fact that dogs travel faster around the sun than humans do. Hopefully some scientists will be able to look into the implications of our pets traveling super fast, and also how we haven't noticed it yet.

Meat Class System

How is it that in the year 2012 we are still living in a country with so much prejudice? I'm talking of course about the backward beef class system that we have in America. Who is to say that one piece of meat is prime, while another piece is standard? We should have moved past this a long time ago. What happened to "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all meats are created equal"? That document still means something doesn't it? There is meat out there that thinks it has greater value than some other meat, but steak can't control when and where it comes into this world. The great injustice of our nation is that once the USDA grades our meat then that meat is trapped in a vicious cycle. U.S. Prime meat heads off to a life of ease in our nicest restaurants while U.S. Canner heads off to a hard life as dog food. Have we all forgotten how inspired we were when we first heard the words, "I have a dream, that one day my meats will live in a nation where they will not be judged by their degrees of inter-muscular fat in the beef, but by the content of their flavor."

Cheddar Cheese Poem

When I think of the Cheese that is Cheddar,
It comforts me like an old sweater.
The look and the smell,
It tastes good as well!
I know nothing else could be better!