MYLYNXBOOKS.COM

Megamillion Fever! We Chose The 462 Million Cash!

2012-03-30T21:12:33Z

We are usually cool, calm and well-centered. But we thought we would take a walk on the wild side today and buy a Texas Megamillions Lottery ticket. We promised the lady in the store we purchased it in a sizable "tip" of a round trip ticket to Paris. We thought that this ambitious request was a little much from a chance acquaintance, since the other place we bought the ticket for an out-of-state relative last week, the checkout clerk only asked for a mere $100.00.

But that is why it is a "fever". The kind and affable tradesman behind us who specialized in heating and air conditioner repairs who stood behind us on the line, and the lady sales clerk selling us the ticket (and a tankful of gas) both understood that the chances of winning are remote. So sharing the airfare as requested was more of a fond wish, than an impertinent demand. So we did the mental math and realized, that sometimes fate requires us to share. We will throw in dinner at the Eiffel Tower in our increasingly fevered imagination.

I said to both of them "it is about as likely as being hit by an asteroid" and they both knew what I meant. The clerk last week did not understand the concept at all, and besides that, she was busy and did not have time for an extended conversation. In this case with the jackpot being so big on March 30th, it might be more remote than in terms of probability, more like the chance of being invaded by an extraterrestrial civilization that looked like the fictional character "Lrr" the planetary ruler of Perseid Omicron 8 in the Futurama Cartoon Network series. If you are unfamiliar with this secondary, somewhat minor character, or the spelling and pronunciation of his hame, here is him in a typical angry pose.

The beloved, if somewhat testy leader of Perseid Omicron 8

But we will be checking in on the Internet. And if our plans go through, we will be at a party tonight, celebrating a past SXSW Interactive 2012 milestone achievement here in Austin. And as the party breaks up, we will be checking in at:

http://www.txlottery.org/export/sites/lottery/Games/Mega_Millions/

As you can see on the ticket at the very bottom of this entry (it is a little light colored on our new scanner), we selected the immediate payout. We like the idea of taking the money right away. We love the feeling of instant gratification.

And you, our loyal customers, and friends of the blog website should consider this well:

Consider making a purchase today of one of our fine used, out-of-print, or one-of-a-kind books. If we win the lottery tonight, we will be thinking of those who stuck by us through thick and thin. When we have to hire a large van to take away the moneybags full of cash, wouldn't you like to be friends, or at least associates of our online book store?

If you are a first-time visitor to our blog, we sell on My-Lynx Associates.com, and such popular websites such as Amazon and eBay. We have put some clickable buttons on the side of the web page.

To our business associates and suppliers - this might be your lucky day too! If lucky means to you a gift coupon at Starbucks. After all, we will be checking our list, to see who has been naught in terms of loyalty and sales volume and who has been nice in terms of buying our merchandise. And if history demonstrates tomorrow that you were indifferent to our blog, by not buying our book then who can tell what fate may bring? Perhaps a smaller gift coupon at some place of lesser repute.

We are not making any promises, either implied or direct with this blog entry to anyone, that is our disclaimer and we will stick to it with an army of marching and obedient lawyers if anyone comes by a demands a "cut" of the proceeds. We are not trying to influence you with visions of vast worldly wealth. We have our own personal spending priorities should success suddenly swamp us with a tsunami of greenbacks, so we don't need independent advice.

But if you read this after the drawing tonight, there is a somewhat small chance that this might be our last blog entry for awhile. There is theoretically at the writing of this blog entry in the middle of a Friday afternoon in late March of 2012, that we can relax and take a deep breath, and have our material concerns allayed for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, we will be checking in for book orders, and tomorrow being Saturday, we will still be carefully wrapping your book, CD, or DVD purchases for shipment around the globe. We realize that fame and fortune is fleeting.

We remember a story we once read that in ancient Rome, there was a specially designated official for all returning conquering heroes. While they basked in the triumphant accolades of the greatest known city of the world at the time. Asian and New World cities being the exception to "known" world, for after all there were mighty cities there as well just not known to most of classical European civilization. The official, while holding over his head the laurel wreath of leaves designated for only the greatest heroes, his other and more sobering purpose of the official was to whisper in the ears of the "laureate" the murmured words "This too will pass, This too will pass. This too will pass."

Of course it was actually in Latin: "Hoc quoque transibit"

So if the crown of heroes is held above our head in the coming days, rest assured that we will imitate that special official, and hire a special worker to revive the observance of that ancient and noble practice of reminding us of the transitory of fame, fortune, and of the many human frailties that the flesh inherits as part of the human condition.

So dear readers, if you have gotten this far, we will indeed respect our commitment to our customers, though with the crowds, the press representative, the TV cameras, the webcams, the digital throngs on Twitter and Facebook, the growing entourage, and the cordoned ring of security around our newly-enriched world headquarters, your shipment might be delayed beyond our usual 1-2 day turnaround time. We may have to designate a personal assistant to handle your order, instead of wrapping it ourselves.

But it will take more than a winning lottery ticket for 400 million (plus) dollars to lose our sense of proportion and dignity.

And for our new friends we have been chatting with in Tamu Nadil in India, that would be 9:30 AM Chennai time on Saturday, or 11:00 PM on Friday evening here in our offices in Austin, Texas, USA. Here is a scan of part of the ticket, we have altered its appearance slightly to obscure the registered trademarks and the copyrighted portions as far as is practical.

We Met Some People at SXSW 2012

2012-03-15T01:57:13Z

And we saw many (strange) things. We have not been posting much lately, but rather than moan about that, we should say that we are wandering the aisles and venues of SXSW in Austin, Texas. That would be the locally well known acronym for South By Southwest. You will have to contemplate and powerfully visualize that the "X" actually represents the mathematical value for multiplication. The insiders all say "South By", we try and spell out the letters, but we are somewhat troubled by the whole exercise of that. Leave a comment if you cannot figure it out.

They are mostly known for up-and-coming music acts, played in a number of small and large forums. We took a walk down 6th Street in downtown Austin, known for the many small cafes, bars and music venues and the noise was deafening in the early afternoon. Musicians were set up on street corners hoping to be discovered. We might take some pictures tomorrow. But then again, there are already thousands of pictures that will be posted. We concentrate on the prose, not on the visual accompaniment.

We were looking for books, but we found mostly software applications, apps (applications for the iPhone) and we found one we could maybe use with books, if we wanted to change our software.

There is a bookstore at the main event center, we will break away from marveling at the software and web-driven services to take a look.

What we learned is that there is also, simultaneously a lot of events going on in the area, with thousands of people roaming the streets. It is a little like a Mardi Gras for film, business, and there is an atmosphere of general carousing. Being booksellers, we donned our regimental striped tie, but that made us the only one, though we heard that there were a few other tie-wearers. We hate to bow to social pressure, but the 80 + degree temperatures mean it is something like early Spring in the southern tier of the United States

It is quite a festival. We even saw a man in unusual garb, with a sombrero, sandals, looking like he walked out of a movie. He was looking at the bus schedule behind where we were standing, and his appearance was astonishing. He was looking for how late the buses ran, but his English seemed to be non-existent, We made a casual remark in Spanish that he responded to, and soon we were chatting away about the "horario" or schedule and how late the buses ran.

Incidentally, we sell books in Spanish, so we are always on the lookout for texts, and it helps keep us fluent, and we recently sold a book that had some classic pictures of the residents of his area, so we knew instantly what he was talking about. He told us that he was a musician from Jalisco, who was performing downtown. We plan to visit him tomorrow and hear his performance. We spent most of the day seeking out different things that we could sell on our web sites, so we hope to have more to report later.

In short, lots of people from out of town with the hope of striking it rich, and many young and attractive people from all over the world who have descended upon the city to participate in what really is a 10 day festival of software, music, and film. We have been hearing about it for years, so we finally went down to participate, and now our feet our worn out.

We are Still Here, But Busy Shipping!

2012-02-08T01:00:00Z

We started shipping from a different post office today. But we are still accepting book orders for our merchandise. Check the different websites by using the links on the right.

We have been out looking for new books to sell, and our shelves are groaning under the weight, but we have not got around to actually putting them up for sale. We are enjoying a break from the winter weather, we had some much-needed rain in drought-parched Texas, the grass in the back is starting to green up as well. The temperatures have gotten as high as the high 70s (that would be around 25 degrees Celsius for our international visitors), which is almost summer-like for February.

The conditions can change at any time, and we are learning to appreciate the mild Texas weather when it becomes available, because we could have icicles on the trees at any time, if the weather takes a turn for the cold.

A Somewhat Grey Christmas Eve

2011-12-25T02:24:07Z

It was kind of cool for Central Texas, we have had intermittent rainy weather, which while a little mood-lowering, we have another, more logical side that rejoices in the water falling from the sky as we think back to almost a year of dry and dusty weather, where everything was crispy brown and even the poor birds and squirrels were panting in the heat, their water supplies nearly gone for the most part. A ghost town (or actually ghost foundations) emerged from one of the local reservoirs, having been covered by an artificial lake since the 1930s and rarely seen since. A tour company took boats out into the huge lake, or what is left of it, so that tourists could visit the site. It may be covered up again.

We have been left with one of the family's pet dogs for a couple of days. We took her out briefly to walk through a small copse of trees, many which were conveniently labeled for identification. However, we were dismayed that someone has defaced the names of the trees on some of the labels since our last visit, making them illegible. Since they were printed on a metal backing, we were astonished at the callous purpose of trying to render the little plaques useless. Our dismay was overcome when four or five deer were feeding in an isolated area amongst the trees, and while they regarded us very intently, they did not much more than flick there white tails as the pair of us outsiders regarded a couple of the tawny natives.

Here is a view out the window, a little damp itself. We will be watching the year-end shows on television, and leafing through some tomes. We have prepared some hot soup to offset the chilly weather in the 40s, and we are updating an old laptop with a new anti-virus edition and the dozens upon dozens of Widows updates that it has missed by sitting in the closet unused for months

Charlie Brown Christmas - Again

2011-12-12T01:00:00Z

We flagged the Charlie Brown Christmas Special for watching this year. A little pop-up came up on the television screen a few nights ago telling us it was time, we fiddled with our cable service, and it took a couple of minutes to get the right channel, we wanted the high-definition version.

We started with the scene where Charlie Brown confesses to being "depressed". And that is the crux of the whole show. That in the middle of the happiest time of the year, a supposed small child would confess to one of his peers (that would be LInus) that he was feeling down. And each year since the early sixties, that show has been on.

We only started watching it the last couple of years. And this year we could not finish watching it. It is a fairly short cartoon, but it set our teeth on edge. Maybe it is just us, because we checked on Amazon, and there are over 230 reviews of the special. That is a lot of people who grew up with the show. We did not grow up with it. We ignored it for decades. But now, out of nostalgia, we do look back on the halcyon days of yore, when conspicuous consumption was the rule, in the show they actually refer to an aluminum tree.

This year maybe things are not so conspicuous. But we feel from watching the television, that we should buy, buy, buy. And that is not a bad thing, not really evil, because the workers in the stores need their jobs too. We sell stuff here, mostly books, but maybe we should be reading more, or listening to our own compact discs, since the television is hypnotizing us with the endless parade of things that we don't really want. Here is our little version of a Charlie Brown sweater. We took the zig-zag line and made it like a stock market graph.

We think back over the many Christmases, and we know that they were not always filled with glee. It is the darker time of year. Even for people who do not celebrate Christmas. Maybe it is different in the Southern Hemisphere, there it is the beginning of summer.

Maybe we need one of those light boxes that we saw on the Doctor Oz show. They generate a high lumen light that dispels the seasonal blues from the shorter days. Actually here in Central Texas, we should just walk outdoors, We are just about far enough south in terms of latitude, that we could probably get some extra Vitamin D in our systems if we went out at mid-day. But we need to get out and get some Vitamin D.

We cannot complain since on the plus side, it has been raining here in Central Texas. The local streams are no longer bone-dry, though we look hopefully at the skies, since the reservoirs are still mostly emptying, even with the mild rains.

The last few days have been gray and cold. After all the record-breaking heat over the summer, it is a refreshing change, somehow we think we should be re-radiating the heat that we stored up during the last 6 months for so, but that is not working. It is probably all a matter of mental attitude. We saw a guy featured on a program about Barrow, Alaska, and when it was 30 below, he walked around in a tee-shirt. We don't know how he did it, because that is frost-bite weather, but he has somehow acclimated himself to it. He was interviewed by Jim Cantore on the weather Channel, just type in Barrow on their video search to see this remarkable man's adaptation.

Here is the special on DVD, available on Amazon for a reasonable price:

Amazon.com Widgets

It Happens But Once A Year

2011-12-06T01:00:00Z

We have a cactus growing in our office. Actually it is more of succulent plant, native to the coasts of Brazil. We don't pay much attention to it, we water the plant when we remember. It does not have any spikes or needles, it is just a kind of thin, if somewhat jagged looking member from south of the Equator.

And then in the Fall (that would be Autumn to our British fans), we put it outside in the dimming light of the latter part of the year. That diminution of light and the shorter days causes our "Christmas Cactus" to begin forming buds, and within the last few days, they have blossomed into a resplendent collection of waxy white flowers, with just a hint of pink. We were lucky this year, because an overnight frost can actually kill the whole plant, but this year it only got down to the high thirties, and then we decided to bring the plant indoors for safekeeping.

The only problems is that the lights will throw off the flowering mechanism, so we may take it back outdoors as the weather oscillates between hot and cold, as it is wont to do in Central Texas in winter. We can have a balmy day in the 80s as befits a Southern climate, but a blast of cold air from the Arctic can mean ice in the birdbath a couple of days later.

This is probably the best year we have ever seen for our "Holiday Cactus" (for those of you who do not believe in or do not participate in Christmas). It is also called the "Thanksgiving Cactus", and in our case the buds had actually formed earlier than Thanksgiving.

Whatever you call it, the proper scientific name is a member of the genus Schlumbergera, though we have not identified the particular species. It is an epiphyte in its natural habitat, meaning that it is an "air plant" that lives in crooks of a tree. We have it planted in some old soil that has been around for years, and do not pay too much attention to it. Last year we left a flourishing pot of the plant that had grown from a little stubby segment into a pot-full, but we neglected to protect it from frost and the plant dissolved quickly into an unsightly ooze.

Here are some books about science if you are interested in such things. The pictures link to eBay:

Science Books

Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine	Medieval and Early Modern Science Vol. I	Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medi	The Boundaries of Natural Science - Rudolf Steiner Pbk
Science Morality and Feminist Theory	Fragments of Science, Being a Series of Detached Essays	Design of Building Frames (Architectural Science)	Optimal Design (Science Paperbacks)

Santa Claus before Turkey Day - Oh My!

2011-11-22T18:19:22Z

Some people love the Christmas / Hanukkah / End-Of-Year / Winter Solstice celebrations so much that they hardly put away the decorations, before they start planning the next year's celebration.

When we are not reading books, we settle in for an hour or so after work hours to see what is on television, and we see the Red-Suited Wonder running all over the place already (that would be Santa for our international readers who may be unfamiliar with our customs).

He is equivalent to "Father Christmas", only he does not carry the switch that the some sterner European versions of Santa Claus carries. That is switch as in whip, not in on-off. Because, as we informed years ago, Father Christmas is also disciplinarian, and if their are naughty children, presumably he has the birch wooden switch at the ready.

At least that is what we are told by someone who had been born and raised in a couple of unnamed European countries. A quick search that we just did reveals that apparently there is a move to reform the custom, as it is too "frightening" in today's time for children, though we are reassured in any case, that even the sterner Father Christmas is never known to have actually used the whip / switch.

But we were certainly surprised to hear about it, it is a frightening enough prospect to contemplate given our contrasting benign and "jolly" American version of Santa who is usually pictured smacking his lips over a refreshing beverage.

And don't forget the holiday celebration begins officially with a Thanksgiving Parade in New York on this coming Thursday. We won't have a giant balloon, carried by a small army of volunteers, because we thought a giant inflatable book might be a little dull on network television.

We are not big celebrators of any of the holidays, because we are usually busy with the day-to-day details of running a book business. But between the ideas of a Black Friday and the newer Cyber-Monday, we feel we should make at least a symbolic holiday offering. Not exactly a "doorbuster", but in a virtual store, there are no doors, only "portals". And since people get rowdy on Black Friday in some stores, we skip the whole thing.

Not that we want to encourage excessive consumption, most of our merchandise is already attractively priced, especially since we have a lot of out-of-print items in our inventory, some of which are one of a kind.

And then before you know it in six weeks, it is New Years, and the Rose Bowl parade marches through Pasadena. Our claim to fame is that we actually went to Pasadena a couple of times for the parade. It was fun. The pretty girls look you right in the eye and smile as they wave. You can also smell the perfume of the flowers on the floats as they roll by, and you can see the actual marshal of the parade in all of their resplendent glory.

We saw Jimmy Stewart one time riding in an antique car, while he was still alive, and, Ricardo Montalban was riding atop a big yellow pyramid float, having something to do with Mexico, since the pyramid looked vaguely like the one at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan.

We were able to pull the pictures ot that from storage, and maybe we will put them online for your holiday admiration later. There is nothing like a big parade. And there there is something about an aging Hollywood star, riding on an imitation of an ancient Mayan monument on wheels, with the faint aroma of diesel smoke from the floats' engines wafting through the air to create a memorable moment that we can recall decades later. We see he was wearing a trademark white suit, made famous in all those Fantasy Island television episodes.

In Montalban's defense he looked much better in the "Wrath of Khan" the Star Trek movie which was released around the same time. And his biceps in that movie looked marvelous, unlike our own pipestem, book-holding appendages. So, honestly, he looked better than we did, even though at the time, we were decades younger than him.

We won't be sponsoring a float this year, revenues are a little down, and once again, our float idea for a giant shelf of books on wheels was voted down by the higher-ups as just a little too staid. That is because about 95 percent of our merchandise is old fashioned, hold-in-your-hand books. We do sell other items like compact disks, even a few DVDs. We have a list of over a thousand items - look at the link at the very top of the page where it says "Books For Sale" and click there to see a giant alphabetized list.

We have had a mint condition CD of Tony Bennett Christmas songs sitting on the shelf for a couple of years now, and we cannot believe that someone has not snapped it up.

If you are a Tony Bennett fan, or know one, it is the only "new" (actually it is years-old, but it is still in the shrink wrap) copy on the Internet, at least the last time we checked. You can click on the picture link to be whisked to the My-Lynx Associates website, where you can sign up in a minute. It is also available on other websites such as eBay and Amazon, but on Amazon it is lumped in with a bunch of other sellers, so it is a little harder to find. The eBay link is below the My-Lynx Associates picture link, we have a little store there on eBay that goes by the name of hitechandantique.com.

Our own My-Lynx Associates Store

Snowfall CD / DVD on eBay

Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album (W/DVD)

A Photo of November's Full Moon

2011-11-17T19:16:59Z

We were out in the yard trying to capture the glory of the November moon back on the 11th. As the Winter season approaches, the moon conveniently rises higher in the sky, to seemingly compensate for the lower arc of the sun, as it migrates farther into the Southern half of the sky,

The darker and longer shadows of the day as the angle of light lowers in the sky is a sobering reminder of the approach of the Winter season. The days shorten, but then the moon moves higher, and around the full moon, it shines more brightly and longer. This month's moon is also referred to as the "Hunter's Moon", presumably because the folks who used to hunt would use the long nights to fill their larders for the approach of the cold weather. We have been watching the squirrels, and when we put out some seed for the birds, they are right there to gobble it up. And when we are taking our books to the Post Office in the early pre-dawn hours, we have to drive slowly and keep a watchful eye for deer, since they also are more active in the cooler weather of Fall (that would be Autumn for or British visitors).

This month's photo was taken in the later part of the evening, and we shot the moon through some leaves in a tree, which we thought would look artistic. It appears to us, that it is more like a pinkish tunnel through a tunnel of leaves. The camera seems to have picked up the distance to the tree leaves and photographed them in focus, with the sphere of the moon behind it more of a fuzzy glow than a circle. It is something we like to do however, since it marks the passing of a lunar month, and after a few full moons, we are in a different season.

We have been posting new material, mostly books on our websites, but at a slower rate, since we are reorganizing a lot of our merchandise. We have been finding new material that has been stacked up without being made available on-line, so we are trying to straighten up the premises, but this results in duller blog entries, but stacking up books and culling old inventory is not exactly riveting reading. Unless you are looking for a serene and faultless blog entry. In which case, we are moving at a meditative pace, reviewing bills and receipts from days gone by, going through unsold books and preparing them for sale, and of course providing quick shipping for any sales that come our way. Today we reduced our prices on a variety of merchandise, though we hesitate to call it a "sale", since in the online book business, we are just realigning our prices to keep things competitive. We spent some time revising our "Grey Owl" book description, after an observant online customer drew our attention that "Grey Owl" was actually from Great Britain.

We had a 1938 book which was an extract of his earlier works on the North American wilderness. After reviewing the Wikipedia entry about him, we discovered that after his death, there were people who began to dispute his "Native American" heritage, but he was so popular and influential they made some documentaries about is undoubtedly interesting life. So we had to go back and change our description to reflect modern scholarship. Here is the book description via a clickable picture link by Grey Owl on our website:

And if you want to read more about this interesting, what we will politely call "colorful character" you can click the Wikipedia link below. We see in the Wikipedia entry that he claimed to be born in Hermosillo, Mexico, and his parents were a couple of performers in Bill Hickock's legendary "Wild West Show" that supposedly had toured in Hermosillo back in the 1880s..

That reminds us of what we used to tell our little flock of brothers and sisters when they were toddlers, that they had been dropped off on our doorstep by a traveling circus that had passed through town, but that is a tall story for another day. When you live in Texas, a tall story may be just a slight exaggeration for dramatic effect.

Grey Owl entry on Wikipedia

We Are Doing Chores on A Fall Day

2011-11-03T18:38:25Z

(That would be Autumn Day for our British Followers)

It is fall, the temperatures have finally dropped in the last week or so from the 80s and 90s down to the 60s and 70s. We are located in Central Texas, and we had record breaking temperatures since May. But now we can go outdoors without a water bottle in our hands to replenish the water from our reactions to the heat. Right now we are filtering through our book stacks, trying to bring some order to our unsold inventory. Not very exciting a topic to blog about, but we are busy nevertheless with the quotidian details of running an online bookselling business. If we want excitement, we just look inside our books.

Here are some items for sale on eBay, they are on sale on our other sites as well, if you need to find out more, do not hesitate to use the "contact us" link above, and we will send you links to the exact item on other websites.

My eBay items

Saikano, Volume 4 by Shin Takahashi	Whiskey Sour	They Call Me Ranger Ray by Ramiro Martinez	The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to be Perfe	Feeling Good: Strength Training with Your Significant E
Fanfare for Earth: The Origin of Our Planet and Life	Self-Promotion for Introverts: The Quiet Guide to Getti	Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine	The Improvement Guide (Signed by Cliff Norman with dedication)	The Body Sculpting Bible for Men, Revised Edition: The

October's "Hunter's Moon" Full-Moon Photo From Last Week

2011-10-20T01:00:00Z

The moon is never quite the same from night to night, and for that matter from month to month. In the summer, the moon is lower down in the sky and comes up later in the evening. Then as winter approaches, it moves back to a higher arc in the sky, and around the full moon it complements the advancing darkness of winter by moving higher in the sky to more fully illuminate the longer night when the sun is below the horizon.

It helps and seems to complement the darker days of Fall and Winter with the dim, but still useful light. The moon is in "waning gibbous" mode as of now, so it is still up in the sky, a little more than half full right now, casting a dim glow over the late night landscape. Sometimes we come into the office in the middle of the night, and we can see the reflection of the moonlight across the outer walls, which are white.

Wikipedia even has a short article on the Hunter's Moon, last week's named lunar event, which according to them is the next successive full moon after the Harvest Moon, though we heard a meteorologist say that they were both the same thing.

This picture came out a little oddly with the leaves of a nearby oak tree seeming to cradle the moon in its branches.

Wikipedia Entry on Hunter's Moon

Latest Additions to our Online Bookstores

Tengo Derecho A Ser Feliz by Jose Luis Rodriguez	A World Of Christmas Carols	David Cerone Performs Suzuki Violin School (Volume 4)	Health Journeys: Meditations to Support A Healthy Pregn
Ugly’s Electrical References	Shalom Japan: A Sabra’s Five Years in the Land of the R	Heal Pelvic Pain: The Proven Stretching, Strengthening,	Pinball Wizardry: The Theory and Practice of the Art an

Early October - Reading Books is Good For You

2011-10-08T01:00:00Z

Yesterday we started our reflections on why reading physical books is different than reading material on an electronic device that is either connected to the Internet, or how television affects concentration.

By way of explaining this odd situation: some people say that television programs are just a way of getting you to watch the commercials. We don't make any bones about it here - we sell books, a way of elevating your mind, entertaining your inner self, and doing it without the tears of boredom, or even worse, the prolonged anxiety of wondering what is on another channel. Or worse, changing your mental patterns into a semi-trance state. One study says that it can encourage slow-wave alpha state forms of awareness, which have certain characteristics that are different than ordinary waking consciousness.

We had a young associate come by, and when she watched we had to raise our voices to communicate, not because of the volume, but because her attention was so focused on the objects depicted on the screen.

Here are some comments on another blog:

Does watching TV make us stupid?

We don't think that television decreases intelligence, but it can perhaps increase distraction. That is why we always turn off the television in early evening and retire to the library for some old-fashioned reading. Here are some books that will develop your abilities in deep thinking:

Books for Deep Thoughts

Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics	Little Bit of Wisdom, A: Conversations with a Nez Perce	No Boundary by Ken Wilber
The Power of the Pendulum (Arkana)	Samurai Zen: The Warrior Koans by Trevor Leggett	A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

Early October - Why Read?

2011-10-07T01:00:00Z

The rest of the country is talking about the Fall Foliage, at least on the Weather Channel, when the North American trees change color, and people get into their cars to observe the reds, yellows and browns of the early Fall (that would be Autumn to you Europeans, "Fall" is an American neologism.

We have said this before, that we can't help you here to build large abdominal muscles. We cannot help you remove wrinkles and fine lines from around your eyes.

Nor can we keep your food fresher or repair your fine china. That is what television infomercials are for. You can stare at a screen, as we do some late nights when sleep is elusive, hopefully keeping the yourself awake long enough to get sleepy again in the middle of the night or on Sunday, when the stream of tears from repeated yawning is beginning to dampen your reclining sofa.

We are selling on our websites the antidote to those who have become weary of the flickering screen, since we sell old-fashioned, hold-in-your hands reading material, mostly out-of-print books.

That is the alternate universe of television, which has slowly taken over the world with its immediacy and its need to sell things. We watch it too, though we cannot believe what we see, or more precisely, we don't fully comprehend the purpose of why certain "shows" are on the air.

Here are some books about Science to make you think deeper thoughts. They are for sale on eBay and some of the other sites that we advertise on the right.

Books About Science

Medieval and Early Modern Science Vol. I	Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medi	Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New	French for the sciences	The Boundaries of Natural Science - Rudolf Steiner Pbk
Science Morality and Feminist Theory	Fragments of Science, Being a Series of Detached Essays	Design of Building Frames (Architectural Science)	Contributions in Marine Science, Volume 27, September 1	Graphology, or, The science of character in handwriting

How To Steal A Lion's Dinner - What we Learned From TV

2011-10-06T01:00:00Z

Television has seldom lived up to its potential, one of the reasons we sell mostly books. Long time viewers may remember when television first spread around the country (in this case the United States for our international visitors), there was a fervent hope that culture, music, visual arts, would be expanded and the television networks would serve as a fountain of inspiration for many from the largest city to the smallest village.

And on Sunday mornings, there may be a few community based programs that might reach out to this lofty goal, but for the most on the cable channels, there are probably more extended pitches for health and beauty products than there are programs about the fine arts.

But we did learn something new this week. The narrator of this BBC clip almost wryly states "Self-confidence is everything", but as you may see, this is more than self-confidence.

Our business definition of self-confidence is knowing something so well, and having the strength of character that one may contradict a boss in a meeting without fear of repercussions.

But walking forward into a pride of lion's and interrupting their meal is something altogether beyond self-confidence. The editing and filming of this clip is superb, the long shadows of the late afternoon add some drama, and obviously the camera crew could not just stand idly by to get these shots of lions feeding on a wildebeest. One can admire the audacity and daring of the participants, and the fact that they can proceed so coolly and project such obvious ability that causes the lions to react so abruptly.

Just a note for the fastidious: vegetarians may not wish to watch the clip all the way through, since a dinner for lions is not a tidy affair.

Here are some items available on eBay, click the picture to see the sale item on eBay:

Latest Additions

Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow	Wildcats: Street Smart (Wildc.A.Ts)	Indian Lover: Sam Houston & the Cherokees	Hand-To-Hand Fighting Manual ST-31-204 - Karate	The Gilded Room: Decorating with Metallic Effects, from
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics	Handbook of American Indian languages	Manual Practico de Kung-Fu (Spanish Edition)	Preacher Vol. 6: War in the Sun by Garth Ennis	Ghost Music and Other Tales by Thomas Tessier
Edge of Darkness by Troy Kennedy Martin	Practicing Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: An Alternative	Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twenti	Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?	The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smal

Autotrophs Don't Drool

2011-10-02T01:00:00Z

The "Big Bang Theory" television comedy series went into syndication last week, and suddenly there are different cable channels that are carrying the series. And so we hear the theme song over and over. Here are the first four lines:

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,

We stumbled onto the lyrics by turning the closed captioning on. We remember the word "autotroph" from high school biology. But we admit, for a definition, we had to go to Wikipedia to find out what it was, it is the opposite of "heterotroph". Heterotrophs actually consume autotrophs. It would be more accurate to say that the heterotrophs would be exuding pre-digestive liquids uncontrollably around their intake orifices. So "drool" by autotrophs might be inaccurate. If you have an Amazon account, you may wish to visit them, we do not have any copies available ourselves.

A word of explanation for our international viewers: the Big Bang Theory is a television series that is currently very popular in the United States. It is about 4 Pasadena-based post graduate students and their abstract adventures in their world of comic books, theoretical physics, engineering and gaming.

Big Clouds But No Rain

2011-10-01T01:00:00Z

We had a couple of promising days this week when the clouds rolled in, we took a break from listing books here on line. We went outside and looked up at the clouds. On Tuesday there was a lot of upper air turbulence, and we saw what the meteorologists call "mammatus" clouds. There was distant thunder, we could see the lightning, but after a few tantalizing drops, the storm passed us by. But they certainly were unusual. We have had a prolonged drought in Central Texas, so clouds and rains leave us longing for a few drops.

And after the excitement of the clouds was over we went back to provide you with some more recently listed material. If you want to read the Wikipedia entry about mammatus clouds, they have a detailed description about their origin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammatus_cloud

And here are some links to books on eBay that have become available:

Latest Additions

Reality and the Physicist: Knowledge, Duration and the	Black Knights: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen	El Lenguaje de La Pasion	La Boda (Spanish Edition) by Julie Garwood	Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics
The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundatio	Medical Spanish in Pediatrics: An Instant Translator	On The Track of Unknown Animals	Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huang-lao, and Yin-yang in Ha	The Experiential Dimension of Advaita Vedanta
Asian Religions in Practice: An Introduction	Buddhism Day by Day: Wisdom for Modern Life	The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century	A Jew in Communist Prague: Adolescence (v. 2)	Puppet Theatre in Performance. Everything You Need to K
The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An	Resistance, Parody and Double Consciousness in African	Aztec and Maya Myths (Legendary Past)	The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment: Korean Buddhism’s G	Introduction to Mathematical Statistics
Irish Sagas	El Libro De Los Libros De Chilam Balam	Paulo Freire, His Life, Works, and Thought	British Television Drama in the 1980s	Firefighter!, Vol. 9: Daigo Of Fire Company M
The Faith Once Given: The Apostles’ Creed Interpreted f	Apologeticall Narration by Robert S Paul	Estirandose (Spanish Edition) by Bob Anderson	Path Of The Assassin, Vol. 15: One Who Rules The Dark	Una perfecta desconocida by Danielle Steel
The Lotus and the Grail: Legends from East to West	Jazz Fest Memories	From Medieval Madness to the Mitlamp: War and Society i	Cancionero Mexicano (Tomo II)	Valle De Sombras pbk (Nora Roberts Montana Sky translated into Spanish)
Chilton’s Repair Manual: All U.S. and Canadian Models o	Theoretical physics; applications of vectors, matrices,	Building German Airpower, 1909-1914	Atomic migration in crystals by L. A Girifalco	The Encyclopedia of Handheld Weapons

Scottish Book Auction - Finished On Sunday - We Have A Winner

2011-09-28T17:32:00Z

Wednesday 09/28/11 Update: The auction is over, The price for four books was relatively low (you can view the widget below for details). We have already shipped the package after carefully wrapping the books in a custom-cut cardboard box. Our accountant has been coming to the office with a tear-stained face, we think that he has been crying in his pillow, he hates to give things away, and the cost of this auction barely covered the actual cost of postage, let alone the loving care we bestowed upon the books by making a special box out of fresh cardboard and shipping tape.

That is the excitement of an auction, another bidder could come in and raise the bid a little and walk away with 4 books. We get excited about the auction, but for different reasons. We still have to pay the shipping costs, and we had to collect these books and make them available. The widget below, if displayed on your browser will show you the number of current bids, and if you mouse over it will reveal other tidbits of information. The bidding is over, but we will leave this entry up for a week or so in case you are curious about eBay auctions. We started the bidding at a mere penny with free shipping.

Texas Harvest Moon Last Night

2011-09-14T01:00:00Z

We tried to center the moon photo of last night's full moon, but shooting in the dark without any illumination except the glowing orb above is a little difficult. And there is always the fear that there might be a biting ant to sting us as we kneel trying to adjust the focus and tripod.

We have a species here in Texas, a former visitor from South America who has taken up residence throughout the South, and parts of the Southwest, known by the species name Solenopsis invicta, (Order Hymenoptera, family Formicidae). The Fire Ant as they are commonly known as a firelike sting and are quite adaptable, and while our headquarters has not been bothered in several years, kneeling in the grass while adjusting a small camera tripod is always a little bit of a risk, especially in the almost complete darkness of a dark lawn at night.

But we persevered and got a photo for your admiration of the Central Texas moon during the traditional harvest time.

Here are some of our latest books (and some math software for 8th graders) that we have recently posted on eBay - the books are available at My-Lynx Associates and click the links to the right to see the other websites that we sell on:

My eBay items

The Game of Chess: The Strategy and Tactics of Expert Play for Amateurs - Lasker	Yoga Para Toda La Vida	Speed Study 8th Grade Math CD Vista/XP	The Semi-Invisible Man: A Life of Norman Lewis
Ideas of Social Order in the Ancient World	Measuring Patient Changes: In Mood, Anxiety, and Person	Origin of Spanish names : cómo te llamas y por que te llamas así - Bilingual hbk	El Buen Sirviente
Las noches de las mil y una noches	Diccionario de Arte (Spanish Edition)	The Gibson Super 400: Art of the Fine Guitar	Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year Hi
Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize	God Is the Good We Do: Theology of Theopraxy	Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence	Women in the Classical World: Image and Text
The Quickening: Today’s Trends, Tomorrow’s World	Lo Mejor De Roma (Lonely Planet)	Celtic Baby Names: Traditional Names from Ireland, Scot	Guided Imagery for Groups: Fifty Visualizations That Pr
In Quest of God: The Saga of an Extraordinary Pilgrimag	Never Stop - Tony Fletcher pbk - Echo And The Bunnymen Story - 1987	A Barn in New England: Making a Home on Three Acres	A Path with a Heart : Ericksonian Utilization with Resi

Today in Texas History, September 8th

2011-09-08T15:40:00Z

We were visiting the Texas State Cemetery in Austin yesterday when we saw the September 8th date (that would be today) date carved in a memorial stone, part of a larger memorial circle of stones that commemorate major events in Texas history. Provided below are a couple of photos of the stone, inscribed with the first paragraph of a "special report" that was issued later in the month, after the September 8th disaster back 111 years ago today in 1900.

The inscription in the photos is somewhat difficult to read in the photo taken in the midday sun, with the shadows from a nearby tree, so we provided actual words of the report following the photos.

It serves as a sobering reminder on a day when the capital city of Texas here in Austin and surrounding areas currently lies under the pall of one of the worst wildfires in Texas history. The Galveston Hurricane of September 8th, 1900 has its own entry on Wikipedia, and the quote below also also has a web page with extracts from the report on the NOAA website, which we provided a link to at the end.

The rest of the report is one of the most harrowing narratives we have ever read, written shortly after by a Galveston weatherman who barely escaped with his life (he was knocked unconscious and floated around in the storm and somehow still clung to a piece of debris), losing both his family and his possessions in what is considered to be the worst weather disaster in American history.

Here is the above inscription:

The hurricane which visited Galveston Island on Saturday, September 8, 1900, was no doubt one of the most important meteorological events in the world's history. The ruin which it wrought beggars description, and conservative estimates place the loss of life at the appalling figure, 6,000.

Here is the link to a longer extract with more details and beginning with the above quote from the NOAA website:

http://www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/cline2.html