Free Rice, Now in New Flavors

Photo of rice terraces in the Philippines by Flickr user ~MVI~, used under a Creative Commons license.

I've mentioned before that I've had some fun with Free Rice, a procrastination vocabulary-game site, which donates a few grains of rice to hungry people for each answer you get right. By now, they've donated some 42 billion grains. I have no idea how much this translates into in terms of satisfied tummies. I think its main service is publicizing the hunger problem as well as the failure of the United States to join other wealthy nations in pledging to donate 0.7% of GDP toward solving the world hunger problem. Indeed, we ranked dead last in OECD figures for 22 developed countries in 2007.

Anyway, just in time for school starting, Free Rice has now expanded way beyond its original vocabulary game. I was excited about the multiplication facts. No, I haven't forgotten that much of my education; the Bear is in third grade, and I'm thinking this might help him learn to multiply with less nagging (me) and stubbornness (him).

Some of the other subject areas are diverting for grow-mutts. There are Famous Paintings (which gets hard fast, and I guessed cleverly) and World Capitals (ditto, except I totally embarrassed myself). In foreign languages I aced the German and the French, which tells you it's easy. My French is pretty rudimentary, and I bailed as soon as I hit level 10 of 10. I got to level 8 with my Dora the Explorer Spanish plus a few cognates. There are also Italian, chemical symbols and English grammar, which I didn't try yet.

Happy procrastination!