Yesterday there was a prominent recommended diary by newyorknewyork about the wonderful web sites freerice.com. In the comments section, I proposed making a game out of the fact that many of us are fortunate enough to goof off on the Internet, at least some of the day, and that this spikes on Fridays.
This diary is intended to serve as a tote board for how many grains of rice Kossacks can earn to help feed the poor while building their vocabulary.
It takes approximately 20,000 grains of rice to feed someone for one day. As yesterday's diary showed, freerice.com is capable of giving away 24 million grains in a single day. That's enough to feed over 1,000 people for that day. How many people do you think DailyKos can feed today?
For anyone still unfamiliar, freerice.com allows people to answer multiple choice vocabulary questions. For every right answer, you get 10 grains of rice. The site's sponsors pay for the rice and it is wholly legitimate.
You can watch video of refugees in Myanmar receiving the rice from the site (through the United Nations food programme) here:
Free Rice
We all know you are going to goof off on the Internet some today. (You're already here, after all.) So why not take ten minutes to learn some vocabulary, accumulate some rice and then report back to this diary how much you got. I'll try to provide running updates as things accumulate. My plan is to announce a grand total after folks on the West Coast are done working. (So around 9PM Eastern say.)
Two last points that may seem a bit petty. (But it's all for a good cause, right?)
One, you can combine this activity with another one you perhaps have been avoiding? Do you owe a phone call to anyone that you've been avoiding? Someone that kind of bores you or gets on your nerves? Well ring him up, discharge your social obligation and gather some nutrition for the world's poor, all at once.
UPDATE #1: 11 AM Eastern. WE have fed one person! And the West Coaster aren't at work yet. As of PLF515's update at 7:55 Pacific, we have earned 26,620 Grains! Addittionally, one generous Kossack went and paid for 1.2M! grains by making a direct donation through their site. Thanks very much for playing, ans SomeStones, thanks even more for your generosity!
PLEASE: Post new numbers as replies to the thread instead of a reply to a comment. I counted the replies to comments so far but I won't be looking higher than the last comment of my previous update so Reply to the Thread, please.
Secondly, this is a small point but one of my favorite things about this game is that when you get a word wrong, they tell you the right answer and they give it to you again a few words later. And a few words after that as well. This really helps you retain the knowledge. (I will never again forget that caprine means goat-like.)
A few points to keep the track of this simple:
- Only post your amounts gathered in replies to the thread itself. It will be much easier for me if I only have to scan the far left margin of the thread.
- Multiple submissions are fine but if you've already reported please add (2nd amount, 3rd amount, etc.) so I can be sure that I'm not double counting any rice. DO NOT include rice that you already reported in your earlier reports.
- Feel free to tell non-kossacks about this and to report their totals here. As long as they heard about it from you, we can take credit for what they accumulated today.
Lastly, have fun and remember how fortunate we all are to spend some of our day enriching our lives and not worrying where the next bowl of porridge comes from.
http://freerice.com/
UPATE#2 As of 12 Noon Easter/9AM pacific, we have earned 36,960 grains of rice-enough to feed two people for the day....almost. Let's keep going. (And remember that Some Stones did the really generous thing and donated over a million.)
And I also want to give a shout out to "SomeStones" for donating more than a million grains of rice. (Also an option on their site.)
Update #3. As of 1PM eastern, we have earned 40,330. So that's more than enough to feed two people for one day. The response and comments have slowed down so the diary is probably off the front page for most folks but I do think there are some people just waiting to report after a good milestone. Let's keep this going. Let's feed that third person!
Update #4. As of 3PM eastern, we have earned 44,730. I really want to hit 100K before the day is out. That's asking a lot but maybe you can tell a friend about this. Or two. Let's get it done!
Update #5: 7PM Eastern: 47,230.
Progress has not surprisingly slowed but I'm going to keep at it and we WILL make 50K at least.