Hot dogs are not sandwiches

I recently saw this debate brought up again and realized that I haven't ever truly weighed in on it. So let's set the record straight once and for all.

I'm too lazy to look up the kind of detailed description of the debate that I imagine I'd find if I did a quick internet search, so do that yourself. Or trust my flawed recollection of it.

The initial question "Is a hot dog a sandwich" is used as a kind of prompt to encourage exercising critical thinking skills. There are a variety of interesting responses to the prompt and one ultimate, objectively correct answer, which I've never actually witnessed another human being provide. We'll come to that. But to set the stage, I need to recount the typical responses...

1.  One party might argue that a hot dog is not a sandwich because a sandwich consists of contents (such as meat) between two pieces of bread. A hot dog bun is a single piece of bread.
2. Another party might argue that a hot dog is a sandwich because a sandwich consists of contents (such as meat) and bread to hold the contents in some way. Other items that are, by widespread consensus, known as sandwiches, use configurations other than the traditional two slices of bread with contents between them. A hot dog meets the same criteria as those sandwiches.

From there, the whole thing continues in the manner of a debate, with both sides trying to come up with examples to use as supporting evidence for their own classification schemes. Typically, the affirmative side in the debate will cite open-faced sandwiches and submarine sandwiches, trying to invoke some nonexistent classification scheme reminiscent of established taxonomic classification systems. And the negative side in the debate will attempt to extend the logic of the affirmative side to absurdity with more extreme examples.

The average person knows intuitively that the affirmative side in the debate is wrong, so the affirmative side generally clings to a rigid framework of some hypothetical sandwich classification schematic. They stick to a point along the lines of "These other objects are all sandwiches and they have these properties in common, so another object with those properties (meat and other contents held inside bread) is, by definition, also a sandwich." Meanwhile, the negative side tends toward pithy ace-in-the-hole counterpoints. The most popular of these seem to be...

1. Defining a hot dog as the sausage itself and insisting that no matter what the sausage + bun combination is classified as, the hot dog has no bread and is not a sandwich.
2. Asserting that language exists to facilitate communication and that because most people do not think of hot dogs as sandwiches, it is improper to classify a hot dog as a sandwich.

It doesn't generally come up, but those objections are mutually incompatible. If we are to regard general usage of language as our standard, then the phrase "hot dog" is clearly used to  apply to the sausage + bun combo in common parlance, and so the gotcha technicality of defining "hot dog" as sausage alone isn't tenable. If we do embrace a gotcha technicality, then we are accepting that there should be some rigorous classification scheme for this, and the inconsistencies of common parlance are irrelevant.

The problem is that the negative side in the debate, the "not a sandwich" camp, are right, but seem to be unable to articulate the real reason that a hot dog is not a sandwich. So I, in all my splendorous wisdom, am here to tell you the right reasons that the "hotdog is a sandwich" camp is wrong.

There's a hint. Earlier in this post I noted that the argument for the affirmative side hinges on invoking a taxonomic classification scheme. They want to rigorously define different categories of food. Although they do not normally need to go so far as to construct diagrams, they're clearly drawing inspiration from existing systems of classifications used professionally by experts in other fields, such as engineering and biology. They create, or refer to the hypothetical creation of, a systematic approach to defining foods in different categories, as though the foods are machine parts or flowering plants. Then the word "sandwich" is matched to objects already established to have the name and the list of properties associated with the label are deduced from the features those objects have in common. Those arguing for the affirmative are acting as detectives trying to map out the logic to determine what is and is not a sandwich. The huge, gaping flaw in all of this is that there's already an established professional classification scheme for food and it is based on food preparation. The names assigned for food are assigned by food creators, by chefs. We know where the names come from. They are not assigned post-hoc by investigators endeavoring to establish a classification scheme. They come from chefs.

The origins of the term "hot dog" are unclear and it is used inconsistently, sometimes applied to sausage alone and other times applied to the sausage + bun combination. The former is older, which might matter if that was the topic of the debate. But the relevant part is that hot dogs have been around for well over a century and that they were not marketed as or thought of as sandwiches because the history of their creation is different. In a meat sandwich, the emphasis is on placing the meat and other ingredients on or into the bread. Keep in mind that the term is a culinary term, so we're concerned with food preparation here. In evaluating a culinary term, it makes no sense to step outside of the culinary realm and act like we're space aliens observing the object with no prior information. The term is a culinary term, so the preparation of the object as food is the impetus for the term used to describe the object. And while lots of sandwiches have their own steps involved, the unifying element is the placement of contents on or into bread. A hot dog isn't like that. It is created in a factory or sausage shop, then packed and shipped to a food vendor. It is then unpacked, cooked, and added to a bun. Then toppings and condiments, aka "fixings" are added and the combined product is sold and consumed as a "hot dog." It is definitely true that applying the same label to the initial sausage and to the finished product is muddled and is not the way we'd want to do things if we were establishing a taxonomic system from scratch. But that's how it goes! The term demonstrably gets applied, widely, to both. That's the culinary usage. The traditions and the emphases in the two culinary traditions are distinct. To dismiss this is folly.

Q.E.D.

Schloss Grünfluss and Seattle Snowmageddon 2019

Obligatory mention that I don't post here nearly enough. I know, I know. I say it all the time and I mean it every time, but I continue to transgress. It's been months. I'll totally turn this ship around. I can do better. I will do better. What's so difficult about checking in every once in a while and writing a blog entry or something? Nothing.  Nothing difficult about it at all. I'll do it.

Posting here has the effect of taking me back to the LJ days. Mentally, not literally. Of course, but you knew that. Anyway, some minor details in the presentation, combined with prompting from friends and the whole vast community weirdness of it, well, it impelled me toward journal posts of a personal nature. I mean, I didn't share stuff that I didn't want to be made public! I'm not that stupid. I knew I was, by definition, making that information public. I don't think I was foolish to share the things I did, but there's a marked difference anyway. Well, I note the difference, but I never really pinned down the reason. Still can't.

Maybe it's just that I'm older. More grown up. Time has passed, of course, but I don't buy it. Could it have been the interaction with friends? Seems like a more plausible explanation. I was not and am not consciously worried about some sort of unforeseen social consequences for my public sharing of personal details and meandering introspection. In fact, I remember, years ago, coming across this strip...



It resonated with me then, and it still does today. I haven't been holding back because I worry what other might think. Instead, I've been holding back due to some inexplicable torpor. I didn't stop sharing out of fear or maturity or because I decided it was wise. I stopped sharing out of habit. I stopped sharing because it felt easier, because it felt like journaling was becoming a chore.

Even in the LJ days it wasn't all personal. I used that site as a sounding board for everything I wanted to say. I shared links, I posted essays of a kind, I created strange and wonderful communities, and I created a kind of narrative that bound myself and others up into something I'd not initially expected. Oh, it was probably trite or banal more than I'm remembering now, but I did produce some real content and managed to do so on a surprisingly regular basis. I did all that when the whole plan at the start was just to have a "journal." I wrote about what was on my mind, about what was going on in my life, and anyone could see it. My dad even found my LJ one time, and I remember that well. Now I have a blog no one reads. This started out as something more serious, something I was going to use to devote more time to longform content. More editorial, although not truly professional. But I think it's been forgotten by everyone except me. I could say anything and probably no one else would see it. On LJ I refused to censor myself even though people probably were going to see it (and did). Here on Blogger, I changed to a platform that was effectively private, but I couldn't be bothered to talk about things. The irony isn't lost on me.

I know I've brought it all up before. It's important to me, though. When I've reviewed my old content, it's restored memories that were seemingly lost, and it's left me wondering about the gaps. But this place, this half-assed effort, is too sparse. I earnestly want to change that. Go back through my posts for the past several years though, and see that I've expressed that sentiment before.

My last post on LJ, titled "#600" was my goodbye of sorts. Reading it again now, it's surreal. So much that's important is still the same. But strikingly, so much has changed. And I filled in some of the gaps using this blog, but I forget how and when? I worry about those details that weren't filled in? How much did I talk about my graduation from Green River? How much did I talk about my trip to Europe? They both happened later that same year! And then I moved to Seattle (temporarily) and went to the University of Washington and graduated there too and floundered in unemployment again for a time and then got a job again and, well, on and on it went. Life happened. Time progressed. So much to talk about. I think, in a way, I became paralyzed by how far behind I was. Such a stupid excuse for my lack of activity here, but it rings true. I had some ideal in my head for all the things I'd say when it came to my experiences at the University of Washington, but I didn't take the time to post about it here. It dragged on and I know I thought I'd make up for it some day with some giant retrospective post. But that became too daunting and inertia took care of the rest. So much time passed I even went and got a job there. Huh. I feel like I probably mentioned the job at some point, but did I?

I can't really undo the lost years. I can't repair this. Not fully. But let's try anyway. And instead of trying to play catch-up, let's start here. Let's start where we are.

I bought a house. There's more to it. A whole lot of things happened that led up to this. But we'll catch up on those matters or we won't. The important part here, the focus, is that I bought a house. I have moved to Auburn. That's where the house I bought is, so it seemed sensible to move there. I am calling my house "Schloss Grünfluss." It's my house, so I get to call it whatever I want. I don't mind telling you that it's actually kind of between the Green River and the White River, so I had in mind some variation on the name "Mesopotamia" but I gave up on that. No, Schloss Grünfluss it is.

The move is pretty recent. I had some plans for getting settled in, and they've hit a bit of a snag in the form of the heaviest, most prolonged snowfall that the Puget Sound area has experienced in a long time...