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According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children. The award-winning website, FreeRice.com works with the United Nations World Food Programme, the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries.
The site was the brainchild of John Breen, a computer programmer from Indiana who also created thehungersite.com, therainforestsite.com and Poverty.com. Breen invented the site, and typed in all 10,000 definitions, after observing his son study for the SAT.
Breen came up with the genius idea to pay for the rice by advertisements that appear at the bottom of the vocabulary screen. This advertising not only helps support learning (free vocabulary improvement for all!) but more importantly, helps reduce world hunger.
When playing the game, each word you guess correctly adds 5 grains of rice to your total rice earned. You can play as long as you like, and can even click on a speaker icon to hear the pronunciation of the word. You can also select a difficulty level, or let the game determine that for you, based on how well you do while playing.
FreeRice works with a team of professional lexicographers to continually add new and more difficult words to the game, thus making it even more fun for vocabulary geeks like me. Since it’s launch in October 2007, 500,0o00 people have been clicking on the game each day. To date, the site has donated 25,230,699,310 grains of rice. (Just to provide some framework, according to the UN, approximately 20,000 grains of rice provide enough caloric intake to sustain an adult for one day.)
Watch the amazing and inspirational video here, and when you’re done, go play the game! You’ll likely feel smarter and most certainly provide food to those in need.
Ever hear someone use a word over and over and over again and wish it you could just banish it from the English language? Well, thanks to Lake Superior State University, now you can! Refer to their handy dandy 2008 Banished Word List and wave the thing around like a flag the next time your irksome cubicle mate says, “with the right word smithing, we can produce a sweet webinar with organic results that will decimate the competition and give back to the post-9/11 community. ” And if they ignore you, well, back in the day, we would just throw them under the bus, I mean, it is what it is. Probably a good idea to check previous year lists, too, as you may be guilty of using words long past their expiration date. At this point in time, the lists date as far back as 1976, how macho! You can also submit a word for banishment, which I am very excited about.
If you are brave enough to check out their complete list, you may come away wondering if there are any safe words left in the English language. Well, to be totally honest with you, in my humble opinion, I see what you are saying and I feel your pain, but don’t even go there. Whoomp, there it is!
Ok, just a post to get an idea what terminology you all use when waiting to check out at the grocery store, or any store for that matter.
Let’s go back, let’s go waaaaay back, you are getting sleepier and sleepier, now, try to imagine yourself in a pre-online universe… (I know for some of you youngsters, that might be a problem.) You are standing behind several people, waiting to make your purchase, are you on line or in line?
You see, I am originally from NYC and for me, it has always been on line, that is until I got to Michigan, where they say in line. Plus, add to that the whole confusion with the individual word online being defined as one’s being on the Internets.Historically speaking, I have read that the ” on line ” thing came about because of the Ellis Island experience. Immigrants literally stood on lines painted on the floor to move from one station to the next. The idiom remains in the NY area until this day.
Please comment, for I am quite curious to know your usage, as well as what region you’re from, so I can come to some conclusions of my own.
