NANO Smurfs: the smallest smurfs in the world

Finally, I have finished creating my collection of Nano Smurfs. You could fit approximately 20 thousand of these miniature smurf on the head of a pin. I have only created 12 hand crafted super miniature smurf characters so far. This is a major tribute to my favorite of all Hanna-Barbara's cartoons.

So Small

As you can see, the miniature sculptures are so small you can not even really see Papa Smurf and Smurfette in my hand. These are the first two nano smurfs I created.

The Collection

Here is the entire collection standing next to a dime to give you some scale. From left to right: Hefty Smurf, Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Brainy Smurf, Baby Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Greedy Smurf, Dream Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Gargamel, Azrael, Hogatha. Sorry for the blurriness of the photo.

Notice: Greedy Smurf's small collection of cakes, and Smurfettes red shoes.

Hope you enjoyed my collection of Nano Smurfs. Please check back for more miniature artworks. Also check out: http://www.williamhessian.com/ for more of my artwork.

Future of Science: Will we have the power of gods?

(excerps from Future of Science article)

An incredible look into the greatest minds of our current age. This article is a great read all the way through. If you would like to skim, I have essentially taken my favorite quotes out. (much of this article is directly taken from the link above)

Welcome to the future: Michio Kaku and a robot

We have unravelled the molecule of life, DNA. And we have created a form of artificial intelligence, the computer. We are making the historic transition from the age of scientific discovery to the age of scientific mastery in which we will be able to manipulate and mould nature almost to our wishes."

Among the technologies he believes will change our lives in the coming decades are cars that drive themselves, lab-grown human organs, 3D television, robots that can perform household tasks, eye glasses that double as home-entertainment centres, the exploitation of genes that alter human ageing and the possibility of invisibility and forms of teleportation.

"We will have the power to animate the inanimate, the power to create life itself," says Prof Kaku. "We will have the power of gods. But will we also have the wisdom of Solomon?"


THE FUTURE OF PHYSICS

Teleportation

Prof Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna

"We achieved quantum teleportation 10 years ago, and we're using it on a regular basis on the information carried by a system. This information is teleported over to another system, which assumes exactly that information; therefore it becomes identical with the original.

"If you dream about teleportation of humans – well, we can dream – then all kinds of questions arise, such as: what does it mean to be me? When someone teleports me and I know that what is being teleported is information – not matter, not the stuff I'm made of – who is it that ends up over there?"


An end to ageing

Prof Leonard Hayflick, University of California, San Francisco

"Our conscious recognition of the finitude of our lives is key to how we live. Virtually every aspect of our lives is governed by our sense of self and our sense of when we will age, and, of course, when we will die. One really has to think seriously about tampering with the ageing process and what its implications might be."

Electricity from Plant life

Dr Andreas Mershin, Centre for Biomedical Engineering, MIT

"Plants have developed this amazing ability to capture sunlight and create chemical energy and store it. Now we can grab the machine – the protein inside the plant called photosystem, which is responsible for generating energy for the plant – and hijack its function to create solar electrical power. Our goal is to provide an alternative to regular silicon-based solar panels. What we're trying to do is produce a material that you can paint on a metallic surface, expose to light and have some electricity."

Nanobot armies

Dr John Alexander, US Joint Special Operations University

"On the battlefield, nanobots are going to do a lot of things; they can seek and destroy specific targets, for instance. You've heard about the 'surgeons' that you can inject into your bloodstream – well, they can go in there to repair a clogged blood vessel, or they might be able to go in and punch holes in the blood vessels to destroy an adversary. The embryonic stages are here today, and a lot of work is being done."

Unbeatable weapons

Dr Nick Bostrom, Oxford University

"With an advanced form of nanotechnology, it would be possible to build different kinds of weapons systems for which it's very difficult to see how an effective defence would be possible. In my view, the advanced form of nanotechnology is arguably the greatest existential risk humanity is likely to confront in this century."

THE FUTURE OF BIOLOGY

A disease-free world

Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist

"We will have the means, within 10 or 15 years, to reprogram biology away from cancer, away from heart disease, to really overcome the major diseases that kill us. We're in the early stages of that now, but our ability to do this is growing exponentially – it's doubling every year."


Control over human evolution

Joel Garreau, author of Radical Evolution

"For the first time, our technologies are not so much aimed outward at modifying our environment in the fashion of agriculture or space travel; increasingly, technologies are aimed inward, at modifying our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities and our kids. And this is not in some distant, science-fiction future – this is now. What's shocking about this is that if you can do all that, you're talking about humans becoming the first species to take control of their own evolution."

Genetically modified genes

Prof David Farb, Boston University, Massachusetts

"Memory enhancement is certainly within the realm of scientific possibility. And we may be able to alter not just our intellectual but also our physical abilities. If we could pass down these genetically enhanced genes, we could evolve in a different way. We can't afford not to think about this issue and not to be prepared."


Biological robots

Prof Rodney Brooks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"As a species, we are starting to put our information-processing technology inside our bodies – we're becoming a little more robotic. At the same time, our technologies are becoming more biological. Over the next 50 years, we'll see robots with more biological components and people with more electronic components.


Artificial intelligence

Eliezer Yudkowsky, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, California

"We have a choice in how we create artificial intelligence. And you've got to be very sure that a created mind is never going to want to self-improve and that it's never going to want to do anything that destroys intelligent life. You've got to treat that gun as if it's loaded."

Please visit and read the full article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/10/23/scifuture123.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

how to live forever...

I have always been one of those crazy people that want to live forever. I want to be immortal (like Hulk Hogan). A year or so ago, I started writing a "statement of being a human being address" which dealt with solving three problems:

Eating

Sleeping

Breathing

(It did also deal with space travel and other such notions, but thats a blog for a different day.) Now, i quit writing that statement, partially because im not a good writer, nor a good debater, but moreso because other projects surfaced in its place.

However, in the back of my head, I am always pondering how to stay alive forever. Religious and fundamental implications aside, I can't get over the urge to avoid death. As if it was a disase.

Kristen Philipkoski, at www.wired.com, has recently written some very good articles about immortality, and more specifically about Alcor's Extreme Life Extension Conference. Alcor is a very interesting company because approximately 1,000 people pay Alcor $400 a year and have named Alcor as their life insurance beneficiary to cover the cost of freezing just the head for $50,000 or the entire body for $120,000. This is fascinating.

My first reaction is: Who the fuck wants to freeze just their head?

Upon a few discussions online and research, i can understand wanting to freeze your head in the off chance that future technology will figure out a way to clone headless bodies to then have this cryogenically frozen head surgically placed on, or insert your own crazy scenerio involving reanimating one's head (ala Futurama). Thus, restarting thier life, or head, in a new age.

Now, I have also heard of people diagnosed with liver cancer or other such terminal illnesses that have gathered the money to cryogenically freeze thelselves in order to be unfrozen in the future when a cure for their particular disease is found. This has been voted against by the courts; basically saying that it is murder/suicide to be frozen. Therefore, even if the end goal is to be unfrozen and still alive, the meantime period is a technical death. Interesting to note.

For those that havn't followed any of my previous blogs, lately they have been an account of my attempts of polyphasic sleep. Involving sleeping only 3 hours a day, I quit this project after 5 days due to my inability to follow the nap cycle. I am now doing a Lucid Dreaming project with a group of others.

My intentions for that experiment was to find a way to gain more time in the week. Essentially to be awake longer within the time I am given. It is one weak attempt and failed attempt at that, of me trying to live forever. I need to find a sleep doctor who can prescribe me Modavigil. Modavigil is the drug that can keep you awake as if you've had extra sleep, a more scientific and sterioded version of NoDoze. I do want to point out my sarcasm in the last two sentences, since I do not take pills (except Prenatal vitamins during my goatee race) and do not advocate taking pills to solve problems.

Which brings me to more information Kristen Philipkoski writes about nanotechnology (www.wired.com) as she talked about a Robert Freitas who is a nanotechnitian (or something like that) and works for a company with a lot of Z's and X's in its name. But he mentions amazing possibilties for the future with the development of new nanotechnology.

For instance, a way to avoid breathing. There is a hypothetical injection of just 5 cc's of respirocytes which would allow a person to run a five minute mile for 12 minutes without even taking a single breath. Respirocytes they are called, they are artificial red blood cells -- nano machines.

This is exciting to me because if we can find a way to constantly inject these cells or figure out a way to let our bodies adapt them into the normal workings of our system (keep in mind i have no idea if anything i am saying has any realm of possibilty in any way-im just saying things) into our body we could potentially go under water, float around in space, avoid poisonous smells, smoke ect.


"Death is an outrage!" Freitas said. "Let's do something about it."

I happen to completely agree.

I'm not signing up to freeze my head just yet (partially because i dont have the money), but I AM going to join the Curing Old Age Disease Society and search for other inventions, conventions, experiments that may be making progress in this direction.

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there is a discussion about my blog going on right now at stevepavlina forums: Steve Pavlina forum

check it out and add your comments.