Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Linkfest
Several interesting links I've come across lately:
At Freerice.com, you can test your vocabulary and donate food to hungry people. For every vocabulary question you answer correctly, the site promises to give 20 grains of rice to the United Nations' World Food Program. (Sound too good to be true? Snopes.com believes it's legit.)
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I was in stat class last night and missed the Democratic debate, but this video provides an interesting perspective on Clinton's accusations that Obama plagiarized lines in a speech.
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What has Obama done for you lately? You can find out here.
At Freerice.com, you can test your vocabulary and donate food to hungry people. For every vocabulary question you answer correctly, the site promises to give 20 grains of rice to the United Nations' World Food Program. (Sound too good to be true? Snopes.com believes it's legit.)
*
I was in stat class last night and missed the Democratic debate, but this video provides an interesting perspective on Clinton's accusations that Obama plagiarized lines in a speech.
*
What has Obama done for you lately? You can find out here.
posted by Tess | 11:28 AM
4 Comments:
Oh, yeah, Freerice is great. There's a broad enough range of words that an eight-year-old at my theatre talks about it on a regular basis, as does my English teacher, who has what is quite possibly the largest vocabulary of anyone I know. I wonder how many grains of rice are in a standard serving?
cool links!!!!!!!
I like the idea of building my vocabulary (though I wonder if quizzing on individual words out of context is pedagogically the most effective way to do it), but I just can't shake my suspicion that this freerice site isn't a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
If you enjoy using the site, then by all means, please do so... especially if you are willing to do exactly what the site says NOT to do, which is set up your computer to automatically play the game, or tape an opaque strip on the bottom of your screen to obscure the advertisements.
But, hear me out. Many people like to deny that they are personally affected by advertising. But the continuing vitality of this industry, combined with the obvious examples of how advertising shapes consumer behavior (even in political campaigns!) suggests that most people are kidding themselves. Follow my chain of reasoning here:
1. This site would not viable if the revenue generated from advertising did not exceed the amount given away in rice--which, it must be said, is occurring in extremely puny units given the vast scale of global food aid.
2. Therefore, unless this site shuts down (and it seems to be flourishing pretty well), the $$ gained from advertisers, divided among the total amount of people playing, must yield an average amount per player of "captive eyeball $$" (I'm sure the advertising industry has a word for it, but I don't know what it is) that is greater than the amount that player is generated by playing the game.
3. So, an average player is getting influenced by a $$ amount worth more than the $$ being allocated by her/his playing.
4. If that $$ amount is not effective (actually, I would guess it is pretty darned effective due to its positive mental associations with such a "worthy" activity), then companies will stop advertising, or risk being punished by their stockholders for wasting money.
Oh yes, we are bombarded with ads all the time, everywhere. It seems like just one more drop in the bucket. But, hey, where else can a company get consumer eyeballs to stare at ads in their free time, all the while associating it with "doing good" in the world? (Okay, maybe also at those corporate sponsored philanthropy events...) If you play this game, without blocking the ads, then you are essentially allowing your brain to be subconsciously (or consciously) colonized by advertisers who value that brain space more than the value of the rice you/they are giving. (Hmmm...maybe you should just give away some money to the poor/hungry and help some children build their vocabularies through real live conversation with you instead...?)Sure, there are a few "good" companies advertising on freerice. But there are also lots of plain old ordinary consumer goods companies trying to get you to buy stuff you would not ordinarily buy.
Sorry to get so negative on this. I think there are a lot of good intentions here, but the business model behind it bothers me.
It really doesn't bother me. I try to go through the words fast enough that the ads don't register (avoiding discussion of subliminal messages), and you can always cut the browser window size to hide the offending feature. Since there's a chance it could help someone, and since a large portion of my required vocab for English shows up on the site, I'm going to stick with it!
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