Mental Floss

It's amazing how many different kinds of magazines there are. In the trade magazine category you will find mags like Engine Builder, Tire Business, and Golf Course Management. In fact, every industry from fishing to radio to hair styling has a publication. In the news category we find Newsweek, Time and World, among others. There are a host of financial magazines and then the pop culture mags like Us, People and... well the list goes on.

It's hard to imagine how people can come up with new magazine concepts, especially at a time when so many mags have been folding, but if you look around the magazine racks you will see new faces and titles popping up continuously. Look at all the new tattoo titles.

One of these off-the-beaten-path magazines that we get here in this household is a title called Mental Floss, now in its third year, I believe. They must have wondered what they were getting into starting a new publication one year before the collapse of the economy. But hey, they're still here, so they must be doing something right.

My take is that the mag is a cross between Trivial Pursuit and Comedy Central, entertaining but with just enough grits to make you feel like you're chewing on something. Here are some of the contents of The 10 Issue, volume 3, issue 2.

10 Movies That Changed the World

10 Great Prison Escapes

10 Things That Aren't Boring About Chemistry

My Nest or Yours?: 10 Pick-Up Tricks from Across the Animal Kingdom

10 Dramas That Caused Drama: Plays That Really Made a Scene

10 Child Prodigies (Who Actually Ended Up Doing Something)

10 Bright Ideas In Science

10 Not-So-Bright Ideas In Science

10 Ads Lost in Translation

and a few other miscellaneous distractions and deliberate diversions.

It's not drama. It's not straight-up comedy. It's not earth-shakingly important. But it is entertaining in so many various ways that each month offers something worth the weight. Or, wait...

Have a good read.