feeling philosophical There is a real world and there is a representation of that reality in our mind. All art might be viewed as an attempt at translation: the artist attempts to communicate her mental state (that is, a specific instance of a mental state) to other minds via a medium. Photography is a unique art form, but how exactly is it unique? Photography is a multistage image-making process that begins with a “pure” photograph; that is, a true/unbiased/mechanical representation of the human visual world. But photographers, especially modern digital photographers, then alter that mechanical capture as they transfer it to the exchange medium used to present the translation to others. Seen in this way, photography is a unique and fertile realm for philosophical discussion. We have added a third layer to the reality/mind dichotomy. We humans have devised a machine that creates images that are the result of both mind and reality. Commercial cameras do not "capture light." They only capture the wavelengths that humans can see! So photographs are very much made in the image of their creator. The image on the index page shows me having just arisen from the slumbers of a nap. In that wakefulness, I contemplate the world of shadows. the narcissism of humanity One of our pet dogs here at Canoe Pass was seriously injured this week by the deicing "salt" that is thrown onto parking lots. I guess the chemical is calcium chloride. The chemical is toxic to animals, including humans, but we don't care because eventually it will rain and wash it all into the rivers and seas, the sewers of humanity. The city of Vancouver puts down 50 semi-trailer truck loads of this chemical every week. At Vancouver General Hospital, the maintenance crew spread new salt every day whether it was cold or not. Eventually, you might not even see the sidewalk for all the salt. The calculation that goes into this behaviour is not hard to cypher. "Humans matter, nothing else does." "Marine mammals may perish, but humans shall not slip." And since I'm old and slip, I guess I should root for the salt. But it does seem that humans survived okay before all of this sidewalk salt. They just had to be careful. Whatever. I've been complaining about this for years. People look at me like I'm crazy. It's genuinely incomprehensible to most people that I should be worrying about marine mammals when the integrity of human bones are at risk.