There are few creatures on earth more easily exploited than the aspiring writer. And I’m not talking here about the genuine article, the budding scribe just out of college with a useless degree but the talent to make a career of it. I’m talking about your social worker friend who’s perpetually twelve pages into a novella about her cat, the people you’d feel bad for laughing at if there were a literary version of “American Idol.” But instead of Paula Abdul, aspiring writers have Writer’s Digest to provide their unqualified encouragement. You too can be a published author! This is the month you’ll quit your job! You are a shining star and please renew your subscription today!

If, like Northwest’s readers, you yearn for “land, give me land, under starry skies above,” you’ve come to the right place. The bimonthly is divided into various sections, including “Vine & Brew,” “Nature,” “Plant Life” and “NW Appetite.” Here’s a little known factoid: Chili peppers are three times richer in vitamin C than oranges.being intelligent, athletic and healthy horses. These and other nature insights are a Northwest specialty, which puts a premium on outdoor life in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, Alaska and Montana. Though the stories aren’t compelling nature writing, but they are informative.

Guess the source of this sentence: “Here’s something you probably don’t know about the Internet: Simply by designing your product the right way, you can build a billion-dollar business from scratch.” Is this: a) The latest spam in your inbox; b) The voiceover of your fantasy about Google’s takeover of your company; c) None of the above. The correct answer is “c.” The sentence actually starts the cover article in May’s Fast Company — a piece that has already been widely trashed as puffery on social network company Ning.

I bought the fifth annual homes-oriented special edition of Mother Earth News with the hopes of being inspired to put my money where my earthy-crunchy mouth is and tackle some home renovation projects with an eye toward what is good for the planet. I was not disappointed. The issue is full of all levels of projects, from the simple “I can do that, sure” to the truly intimidating, but awe-inspiring, major-lifestyle shifts (think solar water heater).

As shows dribble and drab their way back onto TV (drab too often being the operative word — am I the only one who thinks “30 Rock” is suddenly too clever for its own good?), now would seem to be a good time to check out Emmy, the official magazine of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Precisely what science they’re referring to I have no idea (”We have a hole in the Tuesday night schedule, Mr. Zucker. To the laboratory!”), but they do produce a decent magazine. Indeed, if the industry put as much work into its programs as the academy did into this mag, we might never have had to watch “John From Cincinnati.”

Rugby’s mission is to “entertain, educate and enlighten its 50,000 readers.” It begins with action-packed photos that prove the boys of rugby don’t stint on gym time. These modern-day Adonises have pinup written all over them. I haven’t seen definition like this since Michelangelo picked up a paintbrush.

The Arab woman in my Brooklyn neighborhood looked odd and mysterious in her burqa — until I noticed she was yelling on her cell phone. She seemed a walking contradiction then, caught between two worlds. That’s also the dilemma of Muslim Girl’s readers — illustrated most starkly in a piece about a Toronto 16-year-old who was allegedly murdered by her father for not wearing hijab, the Muslim woman’s headscarf.

After growing up in a lily-white suburb with a total of two black kids in my 1,800-plus-student high school (neither of them in my class), I now live in an urban neighborhood that is about 80% black. It’s solidly middle-class, so that’s not different, but there are some definite cultural nuances you just don’t get in the suburbs. And even once you’re here, you still don’t “get” some of it. So I decided to check out upscale, which I found at the grocery store.

In America, it has long been assumed that bigger was better. What else could explain the fins on Fifties cars? Then came the laptop revolution — and we discovered, unlike George Costanza, that shrinkage was good. Yes, there were transistor radios, but the sound was tinny and, like the current array of digital toys, largely the province of youth. And by youth, I mean those who do not pay rent. Once a landlord breaks your heart, you’ve crossed the Rubicon. Today, you can watch TV on a mobile phone or text your 2,000 Facebook pals on a BlackBerry the size of a brownie. By contrast, FDR — the magazine, not the president — is big. Nothing says coffee-table reading like an oversized pub.

Opening day means more than cold stadiums and wildly fluctuating batting averages. It also means magazine racks stuffed to the gills with baseball previews. What you might not know is which, if any, are worth reading. Well, I’ve picked up two — Lindy’s 2008 Baseball Preview and Athlon Sports’ Baseball — and neither made me ask for my money back,