For a Laugh - Kevin McAleer

Sensational in the '80s, Kevin McAleer has been laying low until recently when he's been touring again to critical acclaim. Here's a sample of his unique style -



YouTube - Kevin McAleer

Maurice Sandek - Where the Wild Things Are

An animation faithful to the original pictures accompanying the classic story Where the Wild Things Are, written by Maurice Sandek in 1963 -




YouTube - Where the Wild Things Are

The Inspirations of Herta Müller | open Democracy

Herta Muller won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. Commentators have been analysing why -

"Books about difficult times are often read as testimony. My books are also necessarily about difficult times, about amputated lives in a dictatorship, about the everyday life of a German minority - cowering away from the outside world but inwardly autocratic - and their subsequent disappearance through emigration to Germany. For many people my books are therefore testimony. But I don't feel I'm bearing witness when I write. I learned writing through silence and keeping silent. That's where it began." (Herta Müller, Kann Literatur Zeugnis ablegen? [2002])

The announcement on 8 October 2009 that this year's Nobel prize in literature is being awarded to Herta Müller has been followed by the predictable effort of multiple media outlets to package the details of her life into a convenient, digestible story. Much of the coverage reflected the fact that the author is little-known in the English-speaking world (the [London] Times even led with the headline, "Herta Müller. Who she?"; but it also found in her outward trajectory a readily available narrative that to a degree filled the vacuum. The standard portrait of the German-Romanian quasi-dissident writer whose early political engagement under the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime in Romania led to her exile is given added flavour by the twentieth anniversary of the fall of communism across east-central Europe.

This is fine as far as it goes. But it does not go very far. For if it is natural to speculate whether Herta Müller's prize is influenced by her biography, the lack of knowledge of her oeuvre also means that her life-story has to stand in for any attempt to register her work's key themes and assess its value. There is a particular reason to attend to this: namely, that the link between life and writing in Herta Müller's texts is complex and by no means straightforwardly autobiographical...

Read more of Lyn Marven's article at Lifewriting: Herta Müller’s journey | open Democracy News Analysis

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essay The Poet

...For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear, under different names, in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call here, the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. These three are equal. Each is that which he is essentially, so that he cannot be surmounted or analyzed, and each of these three has the power of the others latent in him, and his own patent.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as costly and admirable to Homer, as Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words...

...Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind. Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day. The new agaric of this hour has a chance which the old one had not. This atom of seed is thrown into a new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent two rods off. She makes a man; and having brought him to ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of losing this wonder at a blow, but she detaches from him a new self, that the kind may be safe from accidents to which the individual is exposed. So when the soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away from it its poems or songs, -- a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary kingdom of time: a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the virtue of the soul out of which they came), which carry them fast and far, and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men. These wings are the beauty of the poet's soul. The songs, thus flying immortal from their mortal parent, are pursued by clamorous flights of censures, which swarm in far greater numbers, and threaten to devour them; but these last are not winged. At the end of a very short leap they fall plump down, and rot, having received from the souls out of which they came no beautiful wings. But the melodies of the poet ascend, and leap, and pierce into the deeps of infinite time...

...It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, "with the flower of the mind;" not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible...

...Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, `It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, baulked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not in turn arise and walk before him as exponent of his meaning. Comes he to that power, his genius is no longer exhaustible. All the creatures, by pairs and by tribes, pour into his mind as into a Noah's ark, to come forth again to people a new world. This is like the stock of air for our respiration, or for the combustion of our fireplace, not a measure of gallons, but the entire atmosphere if wanted. And therefore the rich poets, as Homer, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Raphael, have obviously no limits to their works, except the limits of their lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through the street, ready to render an image of every created thing.

O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

The rest is at: Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Poet

Humans Are Luminous | LiveScience

The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.

Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation — an invisible form of light — that comes from body heat.)

To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.

Faces glowed more than the rest of the body...

Research story at: Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light | LiveScience

Plants Recognize Their Siblings: ScienceDaily

...Canadian researchers published in 2007 that sea rocket, a common seashore plant, can recognize its siblings -- plants grown from seeds from the same mother.

Susan Dudley, an evolutionary plant ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and her colleagues observed that when siblings are grown next to each other in the soil, they “play nice” and don't send out more roots to compete with one another.

However, the moment one of the plants is thrown in with strangers, it begins competing with them by rapidly growing more roots to take up the water and mineral nutrients in the soil.

Bais, who has conducted a variety of research on plant signaling systems, read Dudley's study and wanted to find the mechanism behind the sibling recognition.

“Plants have no visible sensory markers, and they can't run away from where they are planted,” Bais says. “It then becomes a search for more complex patterns of recognition...”

A press account of the study is at: Plants Recognize Siblings: ID System In Roots

Placebos Are More Effective Than Ever

"...It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.

The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today's economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.

Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workings—and potential therapeutic applications—of the placebo effect. At the same time, drugmakers are realizing they need to fully understand the mechanisms behind it so they can design trials that differentiate more clearly between the beneficial effects of their products and the body's innate ability to heal itself. A special task force of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is seeking to stem the crisis by quietly undertaking one of the most ambitious data-sharing efforts in the history of the drug industry. After decades in the jungles of fringe science, the placebo effect has become the elephant in the boardroom...

...In a 1955 paper titled "The Powerful Placebo," published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Beecher described how the placebo effect had undermined the results of more than a dozen trials by causing improvement that was mistakenly attributed to the drugs being tested. He demonstrated that trial volunteers who got real medication were also subject to placebo effects; the act of taking a pill was itself somehow therapeutic, boosting the curative power of the medicine. Only by subtracting the improvement in a placebo control group could the actual value of the drug be calculated.

The article caused a sensation. By 1962, reeling from news of birth defects caused by a drug called thalidomide, Congress amended the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, requiring trials to include enhanced safety testing and placebo control groups. Volunteers would be assigned randomly to receive either medicine or a sugar pill, and neither doctor nor patient would know the difference until the trial was over. Beecher's double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial—or RCT—was enshrined as the gold standard of the emerging pharmaceutical industry. Today, to win FDA approval, a new medication must beat placebo in at least two authenticated trials...

...one way that placebo aids recovery is by hacking the mind's ability to predict the future. We are constantly parsing the reactions of those around us—such as the tone a doctor uses to deliver a diagnosis—to generate more-accurate estimations of our fate. One of the most powerful placebogenic triggers is watching someone else experience the benefits of an alleged drug. Researchers call these social aspects of medicine the therapeutic ritual...

...Ironically, Big Pharma's attempt to dominate the central nervous system has ended up revealing how powerful the brain really is. The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That's potent medicine."

Wired.com host the full piece, printed there last August -
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

Science as a Vocation: Max Weber

Science as a Vocation (Wissenschaft als Beruf) was a lecture, originally in German, by Max Weber, a German economist and sociologist, given in 1918 at Munich University.

In it Weber contemplates in great depth the pros and cons of choosing a career in the sciences -

...It is a fact that whether or not the students flock to a teacher is determined in large measure, larger than one would believe possible, by purely external things: temperament and even the inflection of his voice. After rather extensive experience and sober reflection, I have a deep distrust of courses that draw crowds, however unavoidable they may be. Democracy should be used only where it is in place. Scientific training, as we are held to practice it in accordance with the tradition of German universities, is the affair of an intellectual aristocracy, and we should not hide this from ourselves. To be sure, it is true that to present scientific problems in such a manner that an untutored but receptive mind can understand them and--what for us is alone decisive--can come to think about them independently is perhaps the most difficult pedagogical task of all. But whether this task is or is not realized is not decided by enrollment figures. And--to return to our theme- this very art is a personal gift and by no means coincides with the scientific qualifications of the scholar. In contrast to France, Germany has no corporate body of 'immortals' in science. According to German tradition, the universities shall do justice to the demands both of research and of instruction. Whether the abilities for both are found together in a person is a matter of absolute chance.

Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation, the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says, give up any hope. But one must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: 'Of course, I live only for my "calling."' Yet, I have found that only a few persons could endure this situation without coming to grief. This much I deem necessary to say about the external conditions of the academic man's vocation. But I believe that actually you wish to hear of something else, namely, of the inward calling for science.

In our time, the internal situation, in contrast to the organization of science as a vocation, is first of all conditioned by the facts that science has entered a phase of specialization previously unknown and that this will forever remain the case. Not only externally, but inwardly, matters stand at a point where the individual can acquire the sure consciousness of achieving something truly perfect in the field of science only in case he is a strict specialist. All work that overlaps neighboring fields, such as we occasionally undertake and which the sociologists must necessarily undertake again and again, is burdened with the resigned realization that at best one provides the specialist with useful questions upon which he would not so easily hit from his own specialized point of view. One's own work must inevitably remain highly imperfect. Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized accomplishment...

Read it all at: Science as a Vocation

Uncertainties about Global systemic recovery

"...no one can now construct a true picture of today’s global economic situation as macroeconomic figures are more and more contradictory or simply absurd (12). Measurement data and instruments have been so manipulated (13) and limited to a volatile US Dollar as sole benchmark (14), that no government, international organisation or bank (15) can now tell in which direction the global system is heading. The media reflect this chaos and contribute to their readers’/auditors’/viewers’ bewilderment: depending on the day, or even the hour, that they give contradictory news on finance, economy or currency. Policy makers, entrepreneurs, employees,… economists or analysts… are reduced to Pascal’s wager (16) to assess what will happen in future months...

... Instead of a recovery in September, the world is suffering the impact of this summer’s three rogue waves:

. massive unemployment, for people soon to be excluded from further benefits in particular, and its disastrous consequences for nations’ political and social stability, are beginning to appear

. the number of bankruptcies (companies, municipalities,…) and deficits of all sorts, are exploding

. and, of course, the impact of all this on the US Dollar, Treasuries (and the UK, suffering collateral damage) (23).

The first wave already reached the shore at the end of summer 2009. The second one is coming up. And the third is beginning to appear on the horizon...

Read the rest at: GEAB N°37 is available! Global systemic crisis: In pursuit of the impossible recovery

GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) is a monthly e-zine publishing its unique analyses on the upcoming stages of the collapse of the world order created after 1945, as well as numerous strategic recommendations for decision-making in the political, economic and financial fields.

Consumer Gluttony & The Diderot Effect

On writer Brian Julian's website Humbolt1.com is a clear exposition of the tendency for consumer satisfaction to wane, that has become known as The Diderot Effect, after an essay written by French enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot.

The original essay, entitled Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown (translate button on top right) is at Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre - Wikisource

A paragraph from Julian's overview follows:
"...Awareness of the Diderot Effect can help in evaluating possible purchases and their related but indirect costs. For example, buying a larger, nicer house may entail purchasing more and "nicer" furniture. For years, I decorated by putting beautiful posters up with thumbtacks. I enjoyed them immensely, but when I got one thing nicely framed, suddenly the rest looked "tacky." Framing costs a lot of money... If I "go out" for coffee, don't I really "need" a pastry to go with it? If I "upgrade" to a new computer, won't new software also be necessary? What about the printer? The old one just won't do justice to the new machine's capabilities, so maybe I'd better plan on that, too. And so on..."

The rest is here - The Diderot Effect

Instructions on Modern Survival

Jim Rawles is a self-styled survivalist author whose priority is preparedness, and whose precepts are summarised here - Precepts of Rawlesian Survivalist Philosophy

An example is: "Modern Society is Increasingly Complex, Interdependent, and Fragile. With each passing year, technology progresses and chains of interdependency lengthen. In the past 30 years, chains of retail supply have grown longer and longer. The food on your supermarket shelf does not come from local farmers. It often comes from hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This has created an alarming vulnerability to disruption. Simultaneously, global population is still increasing in a near geometrical progression. At some point that must end, most likely with a sudden and sharp drop in population. The lynchpin is the grid. Without functioning power grids, modern industrial societies will collapse within weeks."

Since its launch in 2005, SurvivalBlog has become established as the Internet's most popular daily blog on survival and preparedness topics

Subject areas include (in no particular order):

Disaster Preparedness (Both natural and man-made TEOTWAWKI)
Self-Sufficiency
Christianity (I hold to Reformed doctrine and am a Five Point Calvinist)
Contrarian Investing (with a strong "hard money" precious metals emphasis)
Survival Logistics ("Beans, Bullets and Band-Aids")
Survival Tools--with a strong emphasis on firearms
Hunting, Fishing, and Trapping
Survival Retreat Locales
Evaluating Potential Retreat Homes and Parcels
Retreat Home Construction/Modification
Photovoltaic and Other Off-Grid Power
Communications
Christian Charity--both now and post-collapse
Small Unit Tactics
Retreat Security
Networking with Like-Minded Survivalists
The Second Amendment and firearms legislation
Wilderness Survival
Supporting our Troops--Tangibly
Rural Relocation and Self-Employment
Bartering and The Alpha Strategy
Survival Vehicles--Restoration and Modification
Fuel Storage and Alternative Fuels
Marksmanship
Emerging Threats
Privacy and Encryption
Offshore Options
Quotes of the Day (please e-mail me your favorites and I will likely post them!)
Odds 'n Sods...

Browse more at: SurvivalBlog.com

Earthlings' Ancestors Were Aliens

A comprehensive theory based on a review of scientific findings published in prestigious scientific journals, is presented to explain how life on Earth came from other planets. Life appeared a few hundred million years after the Earth's creation during a period of heavy bombardment. Life on Mars may have appeared near the same time. Microbes are adapted for surviving the hazards of space, including ejection from and landing upon a planet. Microbial fossils have been discovered in fifteen carbonaceous chondrites, most impacted by supernova. The Sun and Earth were created from a nebular cloud and protoplanetary disc, the remnants of an exploding star and its planets which may have harbored life. When the parent star became a red giant, its solar winds blew away planetary atmospheres along with airborne microbes, which were deposited in a growing nebular cloud. Because the red giant lost 40% to 80% of its mass and its gravitational influences were reduced, its planets increased orbital distances or were ejected prior to supernova and may not have been atomized. The inner layers of a nebular cloud and protoplanetary disk protects against radiation and extreme cold enabling spores to survive. Microbes may have also survived within planetary debris which bombarded the Earth. As only life can produce life, then life on Earth also came from life which may have originated on planets which orbited the parent star.

The study, called "Life on Earth Came From Other Planets" by Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D.* Emeritus, is available in the Journal of Cosmology -
Cosmology

'A Summer Place' Theme Tune

Here's a lovely old (1960) performance by Percy Faith and His Orchestra, of Max Steiner's Theme for the film A Summer Place:

Classical Music Rocks! (Talk from ted.com)

Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it -- and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.





I found this inspirational talk on www.ted.com which has become synonymous with excellence. According to the site:

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 450 TEDTalks are now available, with more added each week. All of the talks feature closed captions in English, and many feature subtitles in various languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

TED | About TED

Scary Movies - 2nd Time

Hosted by www.youtube.comedy.com:

So the kids on the YouTubes are doing this thing, where they edit a thing to make it look like another thing. They call it “editing.” We guess, using a computer device, they can rearrange video to make it look like it means something elseIt’s like Notepad, only for video. Where do they keep this on our DOS?

It sounds crazy, but they are even “editing” comedy movies into trailers that make the movies look scary. Here are The 8 Best Horror Remixes Of Comedy Movie Trailers.

See the pick of the bunch at - The 8 Best Horror Remixes Of Comedy Movie Trailers | Best of YouTube

This is considered to be the best of 'em:

Swords; new album by Morrissey

Morrissey's handpicked b-sides collection 'Swords' is out since Monday 26th October in the UK.

Featuring 18 classic songs recorded during his last four studio albums - 'Swords' is the rarely heard alternate history of Morrissey's recent career.

The album features a very special and strictly limited bonus disc of Morrissey live in Warsaw - available while physical stocks last and via iTunes for the first month of release only.

'Swords' tracklisting:

1. Good looking man about town
2. Don't make fun of daddy's voice
3. If you don't like me, don't look at me
4. Ganglord
5. My dearest love
6. The never-played symphonies
7. Sweetie-pie
8. Christian Dior
9. Shame is the name
10. Munich air disaster 1958
11. I knew I was next
12. It's hard to walk tall when you're small
13. Teenage dad on his estate
14. Children in pieces
15. Friday mourning
16. My life is a succession of people saying goodbye
17. Drive-in Saturday
18. Because of my poor education

Ltd. edition bonus disc:

Live in Warsaw 2009
1. Black cloud
2. I'm throwing my arms around Paris
3. I just want to see the boy happy
4. Why don't you find out for yourself
5. One day goodbye will be farewell
6. You just haven't earned it yet, baby
7. Life is a pigsty
8. I'm ok by myself

'Swords' will be released in the US on Tuesday 3rd November.

Full details at: Morrissey : Home