today’s new toy: USB microscope

I’m still in the middle of running the Conference, and am completely exhausted. We have only one product exhibitor there, and a fun one: a guy who imports USB microscopes from China and claims he’s the only one selling them in Egypt.

I couldn’t resist buying one. The cost was under $200, and the images are hypnotic. It looks like a typical Mac accessory, sort of a cylindrically shaped thing attached to a cord. You can take still photos or video. Magnification is 200 X, so it’s not for serious research in chemistry or even biology, but you can still get amazing views of things like ants or strawberries. I’ll post some samples on this blog once I have a chance.

There were a few jokes from colleagues about whether I planned to use it for philosophical research. But the irony is, it does have an indirect use for philosophical research. One possible definition of philosophy is: the decomposition of common sense. And altering our normal visual perspective has a great inspirational value to that end. I’m a great admirer of the Hubble Telescope and Huygens Probe images, and also of microscopic images.