Free rice

Today we’ve got two cool websites my friend Emily showed me:

FreeRice is an ingenious way to turn a game into something actually useful — you try to guess the definitions of words, and for each word you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program. It adds up pretty quickly, and the game is addicting to boot. (And the words actually get really hard the higher you go. Believe me, it’s no piece of cake. :))

Kiva is a microfinance/microcredit organization that lets you lend to entrepreneurs in the developing world, helping them get a jumpstart with their small business. And they pay the loan back, too. It’s amazing to see how few people have defaulted on their loans (they show you that, of course). Microfinance is incredibly cool.

I knew that my linguistics would come in handy some time. I just had no idea it would be to serve several bowls of rice to someone on the other side of the world.

Hooray for backformation, clipping, compounding, and morphology in general! : )

I was surprised at how many words I got right. It’s rather addicting and made me feel better about the 200 pounds of Jasmine rice I bought last week.

I really like that game! Think it will be my new entertainment during law school!

Barney: Amen. I’ve found that knowing a little bit of Latin, Old English, and French has helped a lot, too.

Janet: It is addicting. And that’s good, because a thousand grains of rice isn’t nearly as much as you’d think. (I counted.) But with everybody’s scores added together, then it does start to add up. With all the crop failures in India, though, I don’t know how it’ll affect things…

Megan: Excellent. :)