Your dog staring at you for a long time

What does it mean when your dog just sits there and looks at you directly in the eyes for like a long time?

This is a question I accidentally came across on Yahoo Answers. I was looking for something else but this made me stop. What does it mean when your dog is looking at you? For a long time? I mean half of the world is starving and the other half is soon going to, allied forces colonizing the Middle East, the globe is slowly heating up and we will drown when the Arctic ice melts. But some people wonder what is going on in their dog's mind.

But then this made me think. After all, I wonder about similar things. Not dogs but perhaps my neighbor's look the other day. Or the stain in the hallway -- where does it come from? And so on.

So I clicked and read the answers. It turns out that the dog is trying to assert his dominance over his master. Huh? The next thing you know your fish will be ordering you around. Or your MP3 player. Your cheeseburger one day will just sit there wordless, directly in front of you and with its morose silence force you into vegetarianism.

Maybe I should get a dog...