I am not talented or smart . . .

But I know that I can simulate those traits through hard work. We all can.

Corey pointed me to an article on Scientific American’s site about the link between beliefs about the fixedness of intelligence and actual achievement. Here is my favorite excerpt:

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

Check out the full article. It is worth the read:

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

The author, Carol S. Dewck’s work is also cited in another favorite book of mine, Cognitive Psychology and Instruction. If you like the article and would like to learn more about learning, I highly recommend the book. You can find a link to it in my Open Source Education lens below:

How to Mentor through Lenses

VMFA (AW)-242

Here is another design from this week. I did the pencil and ink work, and Kris Estep did the rest.

OO-RAH T-shirt

This design was initially a rejected concept for OCS. We liked it so much we thought it would make a great shirt for us with a few modifications. Kyle Tobin did the colors and Kris Estep came up with the saying “THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN.” Just another cool day at work.

On the Shoulders of Giants

The influence of previous generations has become so pervasive that we take for granted that many of the doors we walk through, were opened by them. It is difficult to imagine, for instance, that our collective version of traditional American values would be the same without Walt Disney. There are no antiheroes in Disney films. No cynicism. In a Disney film there is no ambiguity between right and wrong, or good and evil. Even when the queen in Snow White falls to her death we feel no sense of remorse or compassion for her—only a satisfying sense of justice. After all, she was evil. Through the lens Disney has fixed upon our heads from childhood, we believe that the world has an order, and in that ordered world justice will always prevail. The good guys always win. Villains are always punished. The cultural wiring for this belief was installed in us long ago.

I have come face to face with my Disney wiring more concretely than most. A few years ago I was doing photo research at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. I was talking with one of the employees when I noticed a poster hanging on the wall that looked strangely familiar. It was a logo for a Marine fighter squadron. On it was a cartoon bulldog with angel wings sitting on a cloud throwing lightning down on the enemy—the good guys vanquishing the bad guys. At first I thought somebody out there was emulating me — or at least my artwork. I had been doing similar unit logos for Marine units since my platoon sergeant ordered me to create a design for our platoon when I was a lance corporal. As I got closer to the poster, I saw in the right hand corner the famous signature of Walt Disney. The poster had been created almost thirty years before I was born.

As it turns out, during World War II the Walt Disney company did over 1200 unit insignia for military units. Growing up, watching Disney films influenced my artistic development, and the work of the Disney Company made Disney’s style culturally pervasive throughout the military. Hence, Walt Disney had a hand in creating my ability — and in the military I create art for — the demand for it. I was not so original as I once thought. Disney left his mark first.

Disney had a lot of firsts. Disney was the first to make cartoons in sound, the first to make cartoons in color, the first to make a full-length animated feature, the first to bring storyboarding into cartoons and to bring the same discipline to live action features, the first to bring a color program to TV, and the first to bring documentaries into the mainstream. During World War II, the Walt Disney Company made training films and propaganda films to help the war effort, as well as the aforementioned unit insignias. The Disney films and TV shows have become so ubiquitous in America that millions of children from every generation since the forties have grown up on Disney.

We are the projection of the past. Disney illustrates that fact in a collective way, as our relatives do for us in individual ways. Take the image below, for instance, which is the result of both kinds of projections. The picture is a unit logo we did this week for the Seabees in collaboration with Cpl Mathew Hood who provided the initial concept. I feel a special attachment to the Seabees through my grandfather who served as a Seabee alongside Marines in WWII on Tarawa and Iwo Jima. It is because of the stories he told of the Marines during his service, that my father, two brothers, and I all served in the Marines. His crackerjack uniform hangs in my closet adorned with the Seabee patch designed by another artist influenced by Disney, Frank J. Iafrate. When I look at it I am reminded of what I owe to those who have paved the way.

Reparable Issue Point Design

OCC 196

Here are some of the latest designs from Officer Candidates School.

The Art of the Disagreement

Cam started a discussion about authenticity, transparency, honesty and doing the right thing. He quoted Seth Godin’s book “All Marketers are Liars,” which is probably my favorite marketing book. Being familiar with the book, I jumped into the conversation. The book is not about lying, by the way, it’s about authentic storytelling. You can read the full discussion at on Cam’s blog:

Chaos Scenario

In the discussion, Cam stated:

My point here is that there is a right and wrong answer, but people will ignore what is right or wrong to favor their worldview, even if it is wrong.

To risk a free-ranging debate across blogs, I’ve posted my response below:

I don’t think (most) people ignore right or wrong because of their worldview; I think most people do what they sincerely believe to be right, but I think the concepts of right and wrong themselves can be different depending a person’s worldview. I don’t see how any two people who disagree could do anything other than reduce to shouting or verbal abuse (or worse) if they can’t accept that the people who disagree with them, do so authentically. Also, it is a good idea to accept that we can be in the wrong because of our worldview as well.

It seems to me that accepting the possibility of our own fallibility is the only way progress can be made civilly. To illustrate this, consider Benjamin Franklin’s words at the Constitutional Convention as he attempted to get the delegates to accept the delicate compromises being made:

[H]aving lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others.

Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.”

In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults — if they are such–because I think a general government necessary for us . . . I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?

It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.

. . . I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

Accepting our own fallibility enough to consider another’s point-of-view is the respect required for any discussion or disagreement to be productive. Respect helps us listen, and through listening, hopefully we grow. Perhaps even our worldview changes a little. Time and again though, we have seen that in politics and in world events, when respect and trust are absent, little can be accomplished.

Help Children, Both Foreign and Domestic

My wife sent me a link to an article on Yahoo about the “One Laptop per Child” project. You can read the article here:

Donate One Laptop per Child, Get One

In a nutshell if you buy a laptop for $400, a laptop will be sent to you and a laptop will be sent to a child in a third world country. The countries that the donated laptops will go to are Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti and Rwanda.

On the Yahoo forum there is a tremendous amount of criticism about the fact that these laptops are going to foreign nations and not to children in the United States.

First, I want to point out that we do have a long-term stake in the world outside our borders. Specifically, we have a long-term stake in freedom because free countries don’t go to war with each other.

Here’s the rub: Our own democracy was preceded by the Age of Enlightenment, which made freedom possible. The Enlightenment wrestled society from an age wrought with superstition and religious intolerance. Education and exposure to differing viewpoints makes toleration more likely to flourish. This was true during the Enlightenment, where printing was the technology that powered such progress – toleration not the least of the gains made. Without this toleration, democracy would be impossible. Luckily, technology has advanced beyond books. By giving children laptops, we give them access not to just one book, but many books – maybe millions of them. A laptop is a gateway to knowledge and a means of connecting with the world.

Enlightenment isn’t an age so much as a process. According to historians, America went through the process along with Europe from about 1650 to 1800. In truth, each generation — even in America — must go through the process anew. In this process, which we today call education, the minds of individuals are developed. The collective result is an educated society that is fertile ground for a healthy democracy. Many third world countries have yet to go through this evolution, but we are now presented with the opportunity to help them do so. An investment in the education of the entire world is a long-term investment in the peace and prosperity of every nation to include those we help directly as well as their immediate neighbors and beyond.

As far as helping American children with the laptops, we can do that too. Simply donate the laptop you receive to Toys for Tots. The Marine Corps Reserve has the distribution network set up to get the laptops to needy children. Throw in a toy too – after a $400 donation, what’s another twenty bucks?

Here is a couple of important links if you’re interested:

One Laptop Per Child

Toys for Tots

Happy Birthday, Marines

The Marine Corps turned 232 years old today. I think there is a lot to be learned from an organization that has been around this long — especially one that holds the reputation as the finest fighting force (or finest anything) in the world.

Here is a link to a page I made about the values and approach of the Marine Corps for the uninitiated:

Marine Corps Philosophy

I must admit that birthdays are a little lost on me. Showing appreciation, be it for a person or an organization, is not a once a year event. We can show much more by what we do daily. So on this day, let me simply say to the Marines out there, thank you, and Semper Fidelis. In one way or another, I will try to tell you the same thing tomorrow.

When We Hit the Wall

Eighteen years ago today the Berlin Wall became irrelevant. I was in Berlin when it happened. About one million people from east block nations, starving for freedom, flooded into West Berlin in a matter of hours. The whole city was “standing room only” as people exercised the kind of freedom that we take for granted. My father, younger brother, Cam, and I shuffled our way through the chaos until we arrived at the Brandenburg Gate. Cam and I scaled the wall to stand alongside East and West Germans amid the tears and cheers. It was euphoric. And there was no question which side of the wall people wanted to be on. As we stood on the wall, East Berlin, which lay behind us, was empty. However, from the ten-foot slab of concrete we stood on to the horizon — literally on the side of freedom — was an ocean of people.

People want to be free. Some barriers to freedom are physical, like the Berlin Wall was. Some are social, like those formed by bigotry, intolerance, and other forms of injustice. Finally, some barriers are mental, like the limits we impose on ourselves out of fear or ignorance. When we encounter one of these barriers there is only one logical response: Get a pick ax and tear it down.