FreeRice.com

I know I had an idea for a brilliant blog post this morning...but now that I sit down to write it, I have no idea what it was. Sigh. Maybe it will come back to me overnight, perhaps in a dream.

Instead, I'm going to mention www.freerice.com, a site which launched on October 7, 2007. It works like this:

It's a vocabulary-building game--you're presented with a word and four choices of definitions. For every definition choice you get right, a donation of 10 grains of rice is made through the United Nations food program. The rice is paid for by sponsors who place ads on the site.

Now, ten grains of rice may not sound like very much. However, it builds up quickly. I was up to 900 grains after playing for maybe ten minutes. The site totals are impressive: to yesterday's date, 1,008,771,910 grains of rice had been donated. Yes, that's over one billion.

My only worry is that it will be too successful--that sponsors will pull out if the donations get too high. I hope this won't happen. Innovative ideas like this make me think there's hope for the human race yet.

Procrastination with a purpose--two purposes, in fact. I love it. I
think it's already had an efficacious effect on my vocabulary, too.