Transfer to Read Twedt completed

I’ve just finished deleting all of my non-musical articles from this site, and they’re available now only at Read Twedt (that title should rhyme if you’re saying my name right, by the way!).  This blog will allow me to share, guilt-free, things that I know are worth sharing with the world but are less relevant to my musical Cerebroom subscribers.  These transferred articles include four psychology terms I coined that I feel ought to exist, an article on the psychology of goals, and one “video game culture” article.

Also, on December 27 I posted a brand new article on Read Twedt:

  • Public School System Changes Needed for the Benefit of Students –  There are parts of our public school system that need to change.  My experience in high school gave me as much perspective on this as any, but my experiences as a private piano teacher have compounded this perspective tenfold.  The most common reason that high school students quit music lessons is because school interferes with them.  The changes I have in mind include rearranging academic priorities, allowing for more sleep, changing how homework is graded, and eliminating group work.  [click here to read the rest of the article]

As you can see, many Cerebroom subscribers might be interested in subscribing to Read Twedt as well.  Even when an article seems too generic to belong on a music blog (to me anyway), many things I write will naturally relate to music because of who I am, even if it’s just a little example or analogy I give.

Here are the four psychology articles and brief descriptions of each one:

  • Consequence Displacement – Perhaps the most useful psychology term I have coined, my wife and a friend of mine have already used it in conversation with me.  We’ve all paid a price for someone else’s mistake.  Now we have a name for it!  The best part of this article lies in all of the examples I give of consequence displacement (you have no idea just how much it’s all around you!), and the last half of the article breaks down our options in dealing with consequence displacement.  The latter section was added after the original publication date in response to someone who posted a question on how to deal with consequence displacement.
  • Perception Imposition – The phenomenon when someone’s false perception of themselves puts you in a situation where you must give up either your integrity or your civility.  The Venn diagram in this article is perhaps the most creative thing I’ve done in any blog article.  The opening of the article discusses an example of when a musician’s opinion of themselves as a performer is inversely proportional to their performing skill.
  • Illusory Gain or Loss – The belief that one person’s gain must automatically translate to the other person’s loss when it actually doesn’t.  The opening of this article discusses a classic makeup lesson policy conflict between teachers and students/parents.
  • Environmental Normalization – Another very useful psychology term that I use all the time (I’ve linked to it from several other blog posts, in fact), and even my wife has used it on occasion.  “Taking things for granted” would be a special case of environmental normalization, which is when we treat our environment – no matter how good or how bad – as “normal.”

Goal psychology article:

  • Keep Your Goals to Yourself –  Contrary to popular belief, repeated studies have shown that sharing a goal with others makes your goal less likely to come true. This blog post goes beyond the studies to identify three exceptions to this rule. Deciding on whether to keep this article on my Cerebroom blog or transfer it to Read Twedt was difficult because there are so many examples that apply to music and teaching, but ultimately the interest this article carries to the general public prevailed.

And the video game culture article, not to be overlooked:

  • StarCraft 2 and Professional Gaming – This article is a culture shock to anyone, whether they play video games or not.  Learn just how far the South Korean obsession with StarCraft goes, and see sportscasting-style YouTube videos that broadcast live video game matches in high-stakes StarCraft 2 tournaments.  This even includes my own dictionary of StarCraft 2 lingo, as well as images of all the maps used in the linked videos.

(c) 2011 Cerebroom

Leave a Reply