GUEST BLOG POST(S): Your Craziest Ideas Are The Ones That Matter Most — Tanner Christensen

By Tanner Christensen 

What’s the craziest idea you’ve ever had?

What made the idea feel so crazy to you? Was the idea too before it’s time? Too ambitious? Was it something far out of reach or something others wouldn’t understand?

If you’re like most people, you left the idea behind somewhere, didn’t you? You abandoned it once you realized just how crazy it seemed. We all abandon ideas that seem too crazy. But how often do you reflect on what makes these types of ideas crazy to begin with? More often than not, when faced with an idea we feel is too radical or too distant, we abandon it. Of course once the idea is gone, there’s no way to prove or disprove the craziness of it.

Without pursuing these ideas, we must face the possibility that our expectations and reservations about them may very well be unfounded. Wrong, even. What we believe to be crazy, out of reach, or impossible, may feel so only because we haven’t tried to make them anything but out of reach, impossible, and crazy.

Here’s the thing: most crazy ideas are rarely as unrealistic or unachievable as we make them out to be.

Some ideas, the ones that come mostly from imagination with little foundation in reality, are obviously too wild to become a reality (you can’t invent a machine to instantly zap you across outer space because the technology and knowledge to do so simply isn’t up to the task, yet). But other ideas, the ones we dream up in the middle of the night, or after a long conversation with a close friend, or when we feel defeated after a long day of school or work, those ideas are typically within our reach, despite our inclination of them being too crazy.

All it takes to shift a crazy idea into being a good one is a bit of energy, ambition, and continued curiosity. We must explore the map of our ideas if we’re to understand where they might take us.

I’m talking about those times when we find ourselves asking “What if?” Or when we stumble on an idea by accident only to say “This could never work.” We owe it to ourselves to get answers, to pursue the what-ifs, and to see if our ideas could work. If not for a definitive answer, then at-least for the energy of living a life well lived, well explored. When we pursue our ideas we discover things about ourselves and life we otherwise may never have stumbled on.

Selling your art in an online store, opening a real storefront in your favorite city, selling everything and traveling the world, whatever your crazy idea is: odds are it’s not as crazy as you might think. It only feels crazy because you’ve never pushed through it. A yellow watermelon seems like a crazy idea until you try it and realize it tastes like a normal watermelon, it’s just colored yellow. Supporting yourself through your creations or ideas can seem crazy, but what if it works? Would you take the risk and benefit from fulfilling the idea or gaining new knowledge around it?

We can’t expect to know whether or not an idea is absurd without first exploring it, because we simply don’t know what we don’t know.

When confronted with the crazy idea of using a hot air balloon to race around the globe, which no one had ever done before, Virgin founder Richard Branson used his personal mantra of “Screw it, let’s do it” and ended up setting a world record. (Branson’s life seems to be a series of acting on crazy ideas instead of running away from them, as he explains in his short biography of the apt title Screw It, Let’s Do It.)

Elon Musk, when faced with the crazy idea of creating a commercial company that would launch rockets into space, didn’t let anything stand in his way. The company he founded as a result of his pursuit, SpaceX, is one of the leading space companies in the world. To get here, Musk had to be willing to pursue the crazy. As explained in Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance: “Musk has his version of the truth, and it’s not always the version of the truth that the rest of the world shares.”

Of course your crazy ideas don’t have to be as ambitious as breaking records or changing the future of the world. Even the small, crazy ideas can be immensely valuable if pursued.

The problem with many of our fears around “crazy” ideas is that the fears often come from only what we know, never what we don’t know. To live a more creative life we must not abandon our craziest ideas, but instead lunge forward with them tightly in our grasp. As Steve Jobs once famously said:

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Here’s to the crazy ones.

Imagine Someone Else With Your Ideas In Order To See Them Through — Tanner Christensen

By Tanner Christensen

Your challenge is this: the next time you find yourself faced with an idea — wondering “what if?” — go ahead and imagine what might happen if someone else approached you with the same idea, in its final form. Imagine them showing you exactly what you were going to do. How might you react? Would you be jealous? Frustrated with yourself? Is the feeling of seeing someone else build your idea enough to motivate you to carry the idea forward yourself?

Finding the motivation to see our creative ideas come to fruition can often be daunting, particularly when the idea is something we’ve never tried before. But if we can change our perspective and imagine a world where someone else took the risk, and what might happen when they do, that can be just enough to get us moving on the idea. Enough to take a small risk, or plan out next steps, anything to push the idea toward reality.

Imagining the idea as belonging to someone else also frees us up to envision how they might create it differently. Maybe they have more resources available than we do, in which case we can get a signal for what things we might need in order to really push the idea through. Or maybe the person we envision moving the idea forward does something more bold than we’d be comfortable with. Seeing the idea come to fruition — and whether or not it’s successful in our eyes — might be enough to help motivate us to see it through, and it also helps us better understand the potential of our idea.

Now think of that solution this other person showed you. What do you think of it?

If you find it interesting, but otherwise useless, that’s a good sign the idea needs more thought and attention to make it useful.

If it’s something you would cherish or enjoy and really feel connected to, that’s a good sign the idea is worthwhile.

If the idea is something that you, even alone, would honestly be interested in—even if it came from another person—at least then you know that pursuing the idea can do something for yourself. That alone can be fulfilling, but it’s also likely that it will be appealing to others too.

If you struggle to imagine anyone else coming up with your idea, an easy way to see what it might be like is to ask a friend to present the idea to you. Ask them to present it as though they had come up with the idea in the first place and followed it through, to make it a reality. Not only will doing so help you envision what the idea might feel like in reality, it can also help spur a new understanding of the idea itself, as your friend is likely to add their own twists and perspectives to it when they present it to you.

More often than not, we believe that ideas are ours, unique to us, and that imagining them coming from anyone else can feel like a betrayal. That isn’t true, and sounds silly when we think of it that way, but the notion of our unique ideas coming from anyone else can be just enough to block us from moving them through the idea stage to the execution one.

As a result: we sit by idly daydreaming about what could be, what we might be able to accomplish, or whether or not our ideas are worthwhile. But imagining someone else coming up with and executing on your idea first can help overcome that initial stage of stickiness.

Originally published (ARTICLE 1) and (ARTICLE 2) in Creative Something 

NEWS POST: Scientists Develop New Type Of HIV Test On A USB Stick

UK scientists have developed a USB test (pictured) which can detect levels of HIV in a drop of blood. The disposable technology could help patients to monitor their own treatment and produces an accurate result in just 30 minutes

Scientists in Britain have developed a type of HIV test using a USB stick that can give a fast and highly accurate reading of how much virus is in a patient's blood.

The device, created by scientists at Imperial College London and the privately-held U.S. firm DNA Electronics, uses a drop of blood to detect HIV, then creates an electrical signal that can be read by a computer, laptop or handheld device.

The researchers say the technology, although still in the early stages, could allow patients to regularly monitor their virus levels in a similar way to diabetes patients checking their blood sugar levels.

It could be particularly useful in remote settings to help HIV patients manage their treatment more effectively, since current tests to detect virus levels take at least three days and involve sending a blood sample to a laboratory.

"Monitoring viral load is crucial to the success of HIV treatment. At the moment, testing often requires costly and complex equipment that can take a couple of days to produce a result," said Graham Cooke, who co-led the research from the Imperial's department of medicine.

"We have taken the job done by this equipment, which is the size of a large photocopier, and shrunk it down to a USB chip."

The test, which uses a mobile phone chip, requires a drop of blood to be placed onto a spot on the USB stick. Any HIV in the sample triggers an acidity change, which the chip transforms into an electrical signal. This is sent to the USB stick, which shows the result on a computer or electronic device.

The diagnostic test generates an electrical signal which can be read by a laptop or handheld device, so could potentially be used by people in remote areas

Published in the journal Scientific Reports, results showed the stick test was 95 percent accurate over 991 blood samples, and the average time to produce a reading was 20.8 minutes.

Some 36 million people worldwide are infected with the human deficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and the majority of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Current AIDS drugs, called anti-retrovirals, reduce virus levels in a patients blood to near zero.

But in some cases the drugs stop working - sometimes because virus has developed resistance to them - and the first sign of that would be a rise in a patient's so-called "viral load".

Virus levels can't be detected by routine HIV tests, which can only show whether or not a person has the virus.

Originally published in Daily Mail UK and in Reuters 

NEWS POSTS: Turning Sun Into Water In Parched Rural Morocco & Vast Moroccan Solar Power Plant Is Hard Act For Africa To Follow

In the Moroccan farming village of Tafoughalt solar panels have been installed to pump water from the ground, as rains dry up ©Fadel Senna (AFP)

In the arid mountains of eastern Morocco, people know the value of water all too well.

"Every drop is like gold. It should almost be measured by the carat," said local activist Najib Bachiri.

Eight hundred kilometres away in bustling Marrakesh, negotiators are this week thrashing out the details of a landmark global agreement designed to stave off disastrous climate change.

But in Tafoughalt, a little village deep in the mountains of Morocco's Berkane province, that impact is being felt already. Rising temperatures are among the factors making the rains increasingly unpredictable.

As a consequence, life for the residents of Tafoughalt -- who largely survive on subsistence farming -- is becoming harder than ever.

"Here, the farmers work on small plots that are barely enough to feed their families," says Bachiri, head of campaign group Homme et Environnement ("Man and Environment").

The group is working to reverse an exodus from the mountains as people seek easier lives elsewhere.

Bachiri says local problems feed into each other; isolation makes life difficult, which encourages people to quit the countryside. Abandoned fields lead to land erosion, which in turn also spurs on the exodus.

And in the background, there is the constant shortage of water.

An agricultural crisis in rural Morocco has seen many people leave the region, while those that remain have embraced modern technology ©Fadel Senna (AFP)

- Smuggling crackdown -

"For their fields, in the absence of electricity farmers rely either on rainwater or on pumping groundwater with diesel-powered generators," says Bachiri.

Until recently, fuel for the generators was at least available cheaply thanks to rampant smuggling from across the nearby Algerian border.

But Algerian authorities have cracked down on the illicit trade since 2013, leading to a tripling in prices -- from €10 (US$11) for a 30-litre (eight-gallon) can to €30.

And to make matters even worse for the fuel-reliant farmers, the Moroccan government has called a halt to diesel subsidies.

"Small-scale farmers here have not been able keep up, which has aggravated the agricultural crisis in these isolated villages and encouraged people to leave," says Bachiri.

But a simple solution is making a big difference: using the sun from above to draw up what's underground.

- Cheaper and cleaner -

With the help of local funds and international donors, Bachiri's group has installed two solar water pumps in the mountains of Tafoughalt.

Two rows of black solar panels, two metres (2.2 yards) across and 10 metres long, are connected to a generator which feeds a pump extracting water from underground.

The equipment is durable and low-maintenance. The sunlight is unlimited in supply, but carries none of diesel's downsides in terms of pollution and ill-health.

"Solar energy is so much better," says 60-year-old local farmer Mahta Allal.

"The pumping is weaker in winter or when it's cloudy. But it's good for us when the sun is there -- it can double the pumping and irrigation."

Siddiq, who has guarded the local well for 17 years and as such is in charge of the community's water-sharing arrangements, said the new system was far more convenient.

"Before, you had to go and collect fuel from very far away," he said. "It was very tiring -- and then there was the noise, the fumes, mechanical problems. Today it's much better with the clean solar energy."

The price of an hour's irrigation has gone down by 75 percent, from 50 dirhams (US$5) to 12.5 dirhams.

"It encourages agriculture," says Siddiq. "Even if you don't have a lot of land, at least you'll be guaranteed a harvest to eat."

Solar energy alone won't be enough to solve Tafoughalt's perennial water shortage. "That's why we've installed tanks to collect river water, and we're also working on installing technology to make the use of water more efficient," said Bachiri.

But he said 450 farmers were already using the two solar pumps to water 100 hectares (250 acres) of crops.

"Some farmers are coming back to the village to work the soil again -- it's a good sign," he said.

NEWS POST: Vast Moroccan Solar Power Plant Is Hard Act For Africa To Follow

Unlike Morocco, some nations in Africa find it hard to attract investors to green projects

A thermosolar power plant is pictured at Noor II near the city of Ouarzazate, Morocco, November 4, 2016. Picture taken November 4, 2016. Reuters/Youssef Boudlal

* Morocco's Noor solar plant will be among world's biggest

* Many African nations focus more on off-grid solar panels

On the edge of the Sahara desert, Morocco is building one of the world's biggest solar power plants in a project largely funded by the European Union.

It is a hard success for other African nations to match as they seek to implement a new global deal to combat climate change.

The huge 160-megawatt first phase of the Noor plant near the town of Ouarzazate contrasts with efforts by some other nations focused on tiny roof-top solar panels to bring power to remote rural homes.

At Noor, curved mirrors totalling 1.5 million square metres (16 million square feet) - the size of about 200 soccer pitches - capture the sun's heat in the reddish desert.

Morocco is showcasing Noor before talks among almost 200 nations in Marrakesh about implementing a global deal to combat climate change that entered into force on Nov. 4 - a day when the Saharan sky was unusually overcast with spots of rain.

"We hope we can be an inspiration," Mustapha Bakkoury, head of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), told Reuters. Many African nations are pushing to boost economic growth to end poverty, while seeking greener energies.

The gleaming concentrated solar power plant is not economically competitive with cheaper fossil fuels, but is a step to develop new technologies as prices for solar power fall sharply.

"Unfortunately for many, it's thought that renewables are to have a light bulb or light a school ... This is to get away from the caricature of renewables," Bakkoury said.

Morocco aims to get 52 percent of its electricity from clean energy such as wind and solar by 2030, up from 28 percent now.

Once completed, Noor will cost €2.2 billion (US$2.45 billion) and generate 580MW, enough power for a city of almost 2 million people. Morocco aims to expand at other desert regions to 2 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2020 at a cost of US$9 billion.

On the sprawling site, south of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains, workers clear ground with diggers, build concrete pillars or clean off Saharan dust that dims sunshine. In Arabic, Noor means light.

By contrast in East Africa, M-KOPA Solar has installed 400,000 tiny rooftop solar panel systems costing US$200 each on homes in the past five years to provide power for light bulbs and a radio. That completely by-passes the grid.

M-KOPA Chief Executive Jesse Moore, whose company focuses most on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, said rooftop solar systems were a breakthrough for Africa, where half the 1.2 billion people lack electricity.

He noted that Tesla founder Elon Musk was trying to sell solar systems to U.S. homes.

"Elon Musk is trying to get people to leap off the grid in California. Over here on the other side of the planet this is happening already," he told Reuters.

Unlike Morocco, some nations in Africa find it hard to attract investors to green projects, part of global efforts to limit climate change and more floods, heat waves and droughts that are a big threat to Africa.

"Morocco is particularly suited for a large-scale project. It may not be suitable for all other countries," Roman Escolano, vice president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), told Reuters.

The European Union including the EIB has funded about 60 percent of Noor. Masen issued Morocco's first green bond, of €106 million, on Friday to help finance Noor.

Apart from sunshine, Morocco has had relative political stability in recent years and a predictable legal and banking system, helping it attract investors.

Even so, Morocco has had a week of street protests after the death of a fishmonger, crushed to death in a garbage truck in a confrontation with police, in one of the biggest and longest challenges to authority since the 2011 Arab Spring.

Unusually for a desert, Morocco has water from the Atlas mountains to help clean off dust. And in some countries, power lines from remote parts of the Sahara could be vulnerable to attacks - Noor's pylons have red spikes to discourage intruders.

At Noor, the sun's rays bounce off the mirrors, heat a fluid that in turn heats a vast tank of molten salt that can drive a turbine to generate electricity even after dark.

Originally published (STORY 1) in AFP/Daily Mail UK and (STORY 2) in Thomson Reuters Foundation