High Levels of Mercury in Supermarket Fish

photo courtesy of Katinka Kober

On the one hand

Mercury levels in fish are getting higher and higher. It's at the point where the federal government has issued warnings to pregnant women and children to limit their consumption of fish.

On the other hand

You need the omega-3 that's found in fish. It's absolutely essential to your good health.

This is the dilemma we all face. As the world's oceans, rivers and lakes become more and more polluted with mercury, we risk losing our only source of fish. And we can't simply stop eating it. We need fish.

The Chicago Tribune has an excellent series of articles on the mercury contamination crisis. This is a must read. You will definitely want to be informed on this as mercury poisoning can cause headaches, fatigue, numbness in the extremities and concentration problems. And in children it can cause learning disabilities.

Another great resource is the Mercury Calculator at gotmercury.org. You can just enter your weight in the online form and it will tell you how much of any type of fish you can safely eat in a week.

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New To Magatopia

Modern Family Living has been added to the list of Family Magazines on Magatopia. Modern Family Living has articles on all aspects of family life including health & fitness, entertaining, home & garden, parenting and more.

Featured Online Magazine

One of Magatopia's Featured Magazines this month is Popular Science. We're all familiar with this magazine. It's been around for decades. But now it has many of it's great science articles free on the web. Popular Science reports on the intersection of science, technology and everyday life with an eye toward what's new and what's next.

Featured Free eBook

If you're a business owner or someone responsible for network security within your organization, you want to understand how to prevent attacks and eliminate network weaknesses that leave your business exposed and at risk.

Vulnerability Management for Dummies is a free ebook that arms you with the facts and shows you how to implement a successful Vulnerability Management program. Whether your network consists of just a handful of computers or thousands of servers distributed around the world, this 5-part book will help you:

• Explain the critical need for Vulnerability Management (VM)
• Detail the essential best-practice steps of a successful VM Program
• Outline the various VM Solutions - including the pros & cons of each
• Provide a 10-point checklist for removing vulnerabilities from your key resources

Somali Pirate Interviewed

What happens in a country where the government breaks down completely, like it has in Somalia? Most of the people suffer horribly and simply try as best they can to survive, but some men, when push comes to shove, will turn to unethical, even violent practices to survive. One of the unethical and violent practices Somalis are turning to is piracy.

Over at Newsweek there's an interesting interview with a Somali pirate. In this short, but very engaging interview the Somali pirate's answers are surprisingly straight-forward and honest. In it he reveals the reasons behind the piracy, much of the details of the events and the solution to the problem (restoration of a functional government to Somalia). Hello, international community, Somalia needs some help here.

Find more articles like these with Magatopia Article Search.

Or browse through over 2500 FREE online magazines at Magatopia.com.

New To Magatopia

Seth Godin's blog will wow you with his perfect grasp of, and articulate explanations of marketing strategies on and off the internet. You'll find it's link in Magatopia's Marketing section.

The scificool.com blog in Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror is all about, you know, cool sci-fi stuff.

And the Critical Gamers online magazine has been added to Board Gaming. It has all the latest board games news.

Neil Gaiman Reads "The Graveyard Book"

Now here's a real treat. Neal Gaiman, author of Coraline and Stardust, has recorded himself reading his new book, "The Graveyard Book", in it's entirety, and has made it available for anyone to enjoy, for free, at his website. All you have to do is surf on over to MouseCircus.com and click on "Video Tour - Watch Now". 

It's the story of a child who winds up being raised by ghosts in a graveyard. It's, basically, "The Jungle Book", but set in a graveyard with Neil Gaiman's own particular, wonderfully engaging, bent on the tale.

I was surprised when I listened to it at what a pleasant reading voice the author has. I highly recommend listening to his reading. If you're not already hooked on Neil Gaiman's books, you will be after this delightful gem of a story.

New To Magatopia

XKCD - Theft of the Magi

Newly added to Magatopia's Comics section is the extremely clever and funny comic XKCD by Randall Munroe, a sample of which you can see to the left. I can't say much for the artwork, but the funny is good. It's probably not for everyone. If you're not terribly well read, you probably won't "get it". I didn't "get" some of the math references myself. But it makes for a refreshing change from the much more common low-brow humor that's out there.

Speaking of low-brow, another addition to the comics page is I Can Has Cheez Burger. OK, it's not exactly what you think of when you think of a comic strip. It's... well... You know those pictures you see all over Myspace? The ones with those cats? And those cats are saying things like "I r drivz ur car" or, well, like "I can haz cheez burger"?... Yeah those. It's that. I love those.

Featured Magazine

One of the featured magazines all this month on Magatopia's main page is Kiplinger's. They have trusted personal financial advice, business forecasting, investment advice, and financial management tools. Kiplinger.com hosts all of the best personal financial advice and business forecasts Kiplinger has to offer. If you're keeping your eye on current financial happenings, and who isn't, this is the place to go to.

New Terminator 4 Videos

This new Terminator movie is looking better and better. The new Terminator Salvation trailer is online over at Trailer Addict, and it looks pretty darn sweet. After the disappointment of #3, I wasn't looking forward to any more Terminator movies. But it looks like they may just have a comeback in store for us. I hope so. I'm a big fan of the movies, as well as the excellent Sarah Conner Chronicles television series. Just click below to watch it.

And as if the new trailer weren't enough, over at auto site Jalopnik there's another excellent Terminator video. Terminator Salvation: The Art of Martin Laing shows a giant "harvester" terminator, motorcycle terminators, the T-600 terminator (an earlier version of the "Arnold" T-800 model) and more. Laing reveals in the video that the movie will feature 10 new killer robots. And you get to see a few of them in action.

New To Magatopia

Sci-Fi movie video clips are a bit off-topic for Jalopnik, as it's an online automotive magazine. What you'll normally find there are auto reviews, auto reviews and more auto reviews. Looking for an auto review? Go to Jalopnik. It's in Magatopia's Automotive section of all places.

Featured Magazine

The New York Times is one of the featured magazines this month on Magatopia. You'll find breaking news, multimedia, reviews & opinion on Washington, business, sports, movies, travel, books, jobs, education, real estate, cars & more. The New York Times is one of the most trusted names in news reporting. 

This Is Your Brain On TV

I just saw this story in The Daily Mail and it's blowing my mind: 

Have you been dreaming of a white Christmas? Scientists could soon watch it on a screen

Basically, scientists in Japan have come up with a machine that can read a persons brain patterns while they are sleeping and friggin' display images of what they are dreaming on a computer screen!

Now I've seen this sort of thing in Sci-Fi movies such as Brainstorm or The Cell, but I didn't expect it to be actually developed in my lifetime. In fact I would not have given it good odds that it was even possible at all.

Of course they are as yet only able to get very coarse images through the machine, but it sounds like they have made the main breakthrough they needed and all that remains now is to refine the process. Go science!

Newly Added

The first magazine that I've added to the Magatopia directory since I started this blog is the online-only general interest magazine Fringe.  It's a new magazine, with only two issues out so far. It's pages will cover fashion, music, trends, runway shows, movie reviews, environmental issues and more. On Magatopia you can find it in the General Interest section.

Magatopia's comic strips page has gotten way too many new links to list individually. Suffice it to say you can read just about any comic strip you desire there, from classics like Peanuts and Li'l Abner to action hero strips like Amazing Spider-Man to the oddballs like Non Sequitur and Bizarro and tons more.

The Magatopia Morgue

The first online magazine to go under since I began this blog is the video gaming magazine The Magic Box. And I'm certain it won't be the last. Online magazines come and go. You'll be seeing plenty more in this section in upcoming blog posts, I promise.

About Magatopia Blog

Well, this is my first post on this blog. Hopefully, I will be able to make it both entertaining and thought provoking. That is my goal anyway. But I'm kind of new to this whole blogging thing, so I may fail spectacularly at it, completely humiliating myself. Maybe even destroying my website in the process as well... There could be lawsuits involved. I suppose that in itself would be entertaining and thought provoking. But not exactly what I'm shooting for.

What I hope to provide in this blog to you, dear reader, is 

• links to news, articles, blog posts, videos or websites that I find especially interesting, timely or poignant. 
• New magazines that I've added to Magatopia.
  
• Dead magazines I've removed from Magatopia.
  
• Profiles of featured magazines.
  

Ten years ago I launched the site you now know as Magatopia.com. Back then it had a different name, Magazine-Rack.com, but when I switched the name over to Magatopia the site remained essentially the same, it provided links to hundreds of free online magazines on a graphical interface that looked like an actual magazine rack.

The site served it's duty well over the years, but with the increased adoption of RSS feeds  it became more apparent to me that an upgrade was in order. 

So the new site now has the latest headlines, for any online magazine that has an RSS feed, that can be viewed directly on Magatopia. This feature should save you a lot of time as you can now see all the latest news in one place without having to surf around to various news sources on the web.

Also new are the forums. Every magazine category on Magatopia also has a corresponding forum topic to go along with it. 

And finally Magatopia now has an article search tool that you can use to search through the thousands of news articles, columns and blogs. It's powered by Google, a darned good search tool.

OK, maybe I should talk a little bit about myself here. My name is James Hubbs. I am an Artist/Entrepreneur/Webmaster living in Chittenango, New York.  Aside from being the Webmaster of Magatopia, I am also a Senior Creative Partner of ZUZZY Miniatures, a wargaming terrain manufacturer. At ZUZZY I design, sculpt, make molds, produce and sell miniature plastic trees and hills and rubber mats with terrain features molded into them.

In the past I was the Lead Animator at Infinite Visual Effects. There I drew the animations for many episodes of the PBS children's television show Pappyland. That was an absolute blast to work on. I didn't make much money at it, but It was great fun to be involved with the making of a TV show.

After that I joined up with fellow artist Kevin Butterfield at Chimeric Dreams Studios. There I have inked some of his comic book art and later we formed ZUZZY Miniatures which is what we are both doing now.

It was around the same time that I put Magatopia.com (Then Magazine-Rack.com) up on the web.

Well, that about sums it up. I hope to be able to update this blog on a frequent, I'm shooting for daily, basis. We'll see.