This is not sports-related but in this holiday season I came across a cool website that is trying to help feed the world’s hungry: FreeRice.com
It’s pretty simple: Give the correct definition to a word and 20 grains of rice get donated to the United Nations to help end world hunger. FreeRice went online in early October and has raised 11.3 billion grains of rice as of Christmas Eve. Give it a try — you’ll learn a few new words and make a tiny bit of difference. What could be a better holiday gift? –Jim Buzinski
on Dec 26th, 2007 at 12:24 AM
This may be one of those things that sounds better than it is. “20 grains” of rice isn’t much. According to the UK Rice Growers Association, “There are over 29,000 grains of rice in one pound of long grain rice.”
So it takes 1,450 correct words to donate a single pound of rice to the needy, or just under 3.2 million page views (with correct words) to donate one metric ton of rice. A metric ton of rice currently sells for something between $350 and $625, depending on the grade (something I’m not qualified to judge – see the prices here). To date, the eleven billion page views have resulted in donations of less than 180 metric tons of rice.
While I admit this is far from “nothing,” and laudable as far as it’s gone, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s the most efficient or easiest way to help feed the hungry.
on Dec 26th, 2007 at 3:38 AM
There’s always someone who has to piss on something nice.