Monday, January 7, 2008

Free Rice!

Check out the website freerice.com. It's a really great concept for a site: you're given vocabulary words and four possible definitions. Choose the right one and 20 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations. As you continue, the words get harder or easier depending on whether you're answering correctly. The rice is paid for by the ads on the site and the website itself is a non-profit offshoot of poverty.com.
So, you get smarter and hungry people get rice. I love this site. Thanks to Joe for the link!

6 comments:

Seal Press said...

Peter told me about this site. He goes to it all the time. He's all about giving the rice. But then we imagined, what if the people who are getting the rice are like, "Stop with the rice already. That's all we have is rice. No more rice! Why does everyone assume we only want rice?" Now we're afraid to improve our vocabulary and offend the people further. K.

BookCannibal9 said...

Whoa. I just spent half an hour on that site. I wish I could remember what voltaic means though...

Elizabeth said...

As soon as I got a word I didn't know, I cheated and looked it up because I felt so bad for depriving anyone of 20 grains of rice!!! Is that frowned upon, Dad?

Joe Cog said...

Liz, leave it to you to take a noble deed (a beau geste) and cheapen it. I don't even know you anymore.

Jonathan Lyons said...

very addictive.

Penny K said...

I donated several thousand grains of rice today (had some time...) and then counted out a hundred grains - because I was curious (and had some time...) Turns out that it would take me all day for many, many days to feed one person one meal. Then it all seemed so futile, fruitless, ineffective, ineffectual, unavailing, unproductive, unprofitable, unsuccessful, useless, and in vain.