I saw this tidbit come across my Snopes.com rss feed, and had to check it out. It is an interesting concept, to say the least.
FreeRice.com is a website that went “live” on the 7th of October, 2007. The concept is that you play a word game that helps you to expand your vocabulary. When you guess a word’s meaning correctly, you “donate” 10 grains of rice to feed starving people. The rice is paid for by the sponsors whose advertisements appear in the banner underneath the word game. The rice is to be distributed through the United Nations World Food Programme.
OK, so what? What is 10 grains of rice going to do against the millions of people without adequate nutrition in the world? That would be my question. Well, since the website’s inception, the “grains” that have been donated are growing at a fantastic rate:
Total Donations by Day
| Date | Grains of Rice |
|---|---|
| 7 October 2007 | 830 |
| 8 October 2007 | 5,670 |
| 9 October 2007 | 76,020 |
| 10 October 2007 | 287,960 |
| 11 October 2007 | 4,584,100 |
| 12 October 2007 | 3,541,350 |
| 13 October 2007 | 3,194,630 |
| 14 October 2007 | 4,343,350 |
| 15 October 2007 | 6,403,920 |
| 16 October 2007 | 6,645,520 |
| 17 October 2007 | 12,157,010 |
| 18 October 2007 | 26,703,160 |
| 19 October 2007 | 40,373,060 |
| 20 October 2007 | 16,175,550 |
| 21 October 2007 | 13,276,900 |
| 22 October 2007 | 26,881,930 |
| 23 October 2007 | 30,423,770 |
| 24 October 2007 | 37,670,700 |
| 25 October 2007 | 30,819,620 |
| 26 October 2007 | 29,607,480 |
| 27 October 2007 | 37,056,070 |
| 28 October 2007 | 42,153,550 |
| 29 October 2007 | 48,720,340 |
| 30 October 2007 | 56,893,100 |
| 31 October 2007 | 59,167,790 |
| 1 November 2007 | 52,142,290 |
| 2 November 2007 | 45,925,390 |
| 3 November 2007 | 45,760,870 |
| 4 November 2007 | 48,038,530 |
| 5 November 2007 | 53,847,080 |
| 6 November 2007 | 73,566,480 |
| 7 November 2007 | 75,201,580 |
| 8 November 2007 | 77,126,310 |
| 9 November 2007 | 63,253,810 |
| 10 November 2007 | 122,377,240 |
| 11 November 2007 | 136,236,930 |
| 12 November 2007 | 188,987,290 |
| 13 November 2007 | 192,744,570 |
| 14 November 2007 | 184,681,920 |
| 15 November 2007 | 201,226,610 |
| 16 November 2007 | 198,342,510 |
| 17 November 2007 | 160,497,630 |
| 18 November 2007 | 170,885,620 |
| 19 November 2007 | 212,660,970 |
| ___________ | |
| 2,840,667,010 |
A quick search on the internet reveals that there are approximately 29,000 grains of long-grain rice per pound. 2,840,667,010 grains divided by 29,000 = almost 98,000 pounds of rice. Not bad.
So, go expand your vocabulary!











Step 3 was to have a little fun with this process. Because some of these folks don’t allow you to see their My Space blogs without permission, I could not see in all cases what pictures they were using. There was one fellow, however, who’s blog I could readily see. There about halfway down the page was my picture in spin class, illustrating an entry about how he was going to attend a spin class himself that night. By adding the picture at right to my old pictures directory, and giving it the filename of the original picture of me in spin class, he and his readers received a special greeting.
