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FreeRice

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:31 am
by Dr. Goodword
Has everyone seen http://www.freerice.com ? Do good while you see how strong your vocabulary is.

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:39 am
by Bailey
Ok I tried but it kinda pooped out on me. the site just quit after I was getting an awesome score too. But I did donate over two thousand grains of rice.

mark can-you-believe-it? Bailey

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:41 pm
by Perry
Wow. I got pressed for time after 460 grains. How long did you spend at it?

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:50 pm
by Bailey
Perry it's addictive it seemed like hours,

mark I-have-a-butt-made-for-sitting Bailey

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:56 pm
by Bailey
I earned another 2480 grains hardly enough to feed one person, but I feel it might help, who counts the grains?

mark wonders-about-such-minutia Bailey

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:13 pm
by sluggo
I find ideas like this bizarre. If they have all this rice, why are they holding it back in wait for we whimsical word wizards? And does that give us some kind of lordship over yon peasantry? And what if we don't want said lordship? Are we to feel guilty if we play until we drop and the next needy person goes hungry?

Very suspicious. I wonder if there's a grain of truth in it.

Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:42 am
by Bailey
Slugger, I agree, I was thinking such; I felt like a hamster trying to power a city with a squirrel cage.

mark puff-puff-are-you-full-yet? Bailey

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:10 am
by bnjtokyo
From the FAQs on the FreeRice website:

If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?
FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 10 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 6:39 am
by Bailey
Ten grains of even long grain wild rice isn't even a mouthful, hence my desperation at pedaling away to adequately feed a single person per day.

mark visualize-hunger Bailey

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:03 pm
by sluggo
So that's it. Thanks bnj.
Funny, I didn't notice any ads (best not tell 'em)...

So we may safely shift the burden of guilt to said advertisers. Done.

Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 6:52 pm
by Slava
Well, I'm too late. I was just going to post this idea, but it's already there.

As it's run through the UN's World Food Program, I believe in it. A couple of clicks a day will add up, if everyone does it. However, there is that old adage about giving someone a fish, or teaching them to fish. Then again, there are times you have to give someone a fish so you have time to teach them how to fish.

I've never gone over a thousand grains a sit, so kudos to the patient ones out there. I notice that yesterday, Thanksgiving, while many were stuffing their face, the donation total went down significantly. Hmmm.

One problem I have with the site is that there don't seem to be enough words. They repeat after a while, and what with all the dictionaries out there, this should be avoidable. However, it's for a good cause.

Another such site, though without any linguistic tie-in, is actually a family of sites. Go to: theliteracysite.com and you'll find 5 others you can visit for a-click-a-day. This one donates money to buy books for children, so it's got a bit of a word association, eh?

Keep on clicking,

Slava

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 5:17 pm
by Perry
Give a man a fish, and he has a meal for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he has to have a rod, reel, line, leader, flies, tying stand, waders, wading shoes, a hat, a net...

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 5:41 pm
by sluggo
Ah, but teach a fish to man and then you have something interesting.

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:06 pm
by Bailey
Give a man a fish, and he has a meal for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he has to have a rod, reel, line, leader, flies, tying stand, waders, wading shoes, a hat, a net...
A LICENSE!!!, a boat, a good motor, and a quiet friend.

mark let's-just-get-reel Bailey

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 7:36 pm
by gailr
I noticed the comments about the site timing out??? I closed the window myself after I reached my goal score, doubled that, and rounded it up again, but there was no indication that the site was timing out even then. Can you guys tell me what you're seeing on your pcs?

Like Slava, I noticed the repeating words rather early on; I was quite surprised by them. I did smile at seeing a missed word drop the vocab level, and how many correct answers it took to restore it.

-gailr
thinking about chessboards and rice grains...