Supertramp

   

Supertramp is an English rock band formed in London in 1969.

The band's individual songwriting founders, Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, originally called their band "Daddy" but to avoid confusion with the similarly named Daddy Longlegs, the band changed its name to "Supertramp." That name was inspired by The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by William Henry Davies.

Davies (1871–1940) was a Welsh poet and writer who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo, in the United Kingdom and United States. He also became one of the most popular poets of his time. His writing focused on nature, observations about life's hardships, his tramping adventures, and the various characters he met. In 1948 the BBC Home Service recorded a version of the book in 15 episodes narrated by Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.

Though the band's music was initially viewed as progressive rock, they went on to combine rock, pop, and art rock into their music and made prominent use of Wurlitzer electric piano and saxophone.

Their commercial success came with more radio-friendly pop elements into their work in the mid-1970s. They went on to sell more than 60 million albums.

Their commercial peak was with 1979's Breakfast in America, which sold over 20 million copies.

Official Site www.supertramp.com

   

Freudian slips

"Freudian slip" is the phrase used to describe a usually embarrassing slip of the tongue. They are beyond simply using the wrong word in that we interpret them to be revealing of our innermost thoughts or unconscious feelings.

If someone said that they were interested in "watching that new show on TV" but actually said that they were interested in "watching that new snow on TV," I don't think anyone would read any psychological meaning into it.

But in 1988, when then Vice-President, George H.W Bush gave a speech on live television and said “We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex… uh… setbacks” the audience did think there was something else going on.

The Freudian slip is named after the father of psychoanalysis and lover of symbols, Sigmund Freud. In his 1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, he described and analyzed many  seemingly trivial, bizarre, or nonsensical errors and slips patients had made. Freud believed that it was our unconscious mind that unlocked our behaviors and, like dreams, slips of the tongue revealed those hidden thoughts.

Freud referred to these slips as Fehlleistungen meaning "faulty actions", "faulty functions" or "misperformances" in German. The Greek term parapraxes from Greek παρά (para), meaning 'another' + πρᾶξις (praxis), meaning 'action') was a term created by Freud's English translator, as is the form "symptomatic action."

A lot of what Freud believed has fallen out of favor in psychology, and there are people who now believe that many cases of Freudian slips are really more indicators of the way language is formed in the brain rather than unconscious thoughts slipping out.

The Austrian linguist Rudolf Meringer, a contemporary of Freud, also collected verbal mistakes, and concluded that most slips of the tongue were from mixing up the letters, not the actual words.

When Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech about education and said  “Our national interest ought to be to encourage the breast - the best - and brightest,” was that his unconscious speaking or an example of a "forward error" when the "r" sound from forward in the sentence in "brightest" changed "best" to "breast"? Judge for yourself.

Litmus test

Litmus is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from lichens. The word comes from lytmos and Old Norse litmosi meaning dye-moss. The main use of litmus is to test whether a solution is acidic or basic. It is often absorbed onto filter paper to produce one of the oldest forms of pH indicator. Litmus turns red under acidic conditions and blue under alkaline conditions.

The more modern figurative use of the term "litmus test" is a situation in which you arrive at a conclusion based on a single factor, such as an attitude, event, or fact) is decisive. A headline such as "Eurozone Elections: Litmus Test for the EU" is an example of that usage.