New games pay off

There are better ways to procrastinate on the Internet than Facebook.

Yes, I know eating up the latest news feeds on your friends' pages and sending witty bumper stickers to classmates are incredibly entertaining ways to waste time. But next time you log on to Facebook to flirtatiously "poke" the Internet crush of your dreams, take a few minutes out of your time to donate some rice.

At this point, you may be scratching your head, wondering where you could acquire rice on Facebook.

But if you travel to www.freerice.com, you'll find plenty of rice.

Established in October 2007, Freerice.com, a non-profit organization, was created with two goals in mind: help terminate world hunger by giving starving people free rice and educate anyone with the Internet for free, the Web site reported.

So far, the Web site's users have generated enough rice to feed two million people.

Here's how the site works:

When you reach the home page, you'll be given an English word and four possible meanings to define it. If you select the right answer, 20 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations Food program, reported www.freerice.com.

With every three answers you get right, the difficulty level increases. While the English vocabulary section is made up of 60 levels and more than 12,000 words, the Web site said participants scarcely make it to the 50th level.

English vocabulary isn't the only skill tester www.freerice.com offers.By clicking on the "subjects" link, you can choose to be quizzed in the areas of math, geology, chemistry, art and language learning.

With those areas, you can challenge yourself to complete the multiplication table, match the names of countries with their location on a map, identify the artists behind famous paintings, identify the elements behind various chemistry symbols and test your language skills by translating Spanish, French, German and Italian words into English.

Considering I'm a word-lover, I prefer to stretch my brain's dictionary.

Sponsors such as Country Crock, Unilever and Rama donate money to pay for the rice players earn. The donated money is then given to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which buys the rice from local farmers and distributes it to the hungry, boosting the economy along with filling bellies.

More than 50 billion grains of rice have been donated since 2007, allowing the WFP to feed people in more than 70 countries, such as Nepal, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Myanmar, reported www.freerice.com.

While I procrastinated writing this story 30 minutes ago, I donated 3,580 grains of rice to impoverished people from the comfort of my room.

Spending half an hour of time stretching your brain when you're not required to do so sounds incredibly nerdy, but remember the difference you could be making in someone else's life. Believe me - the site, which is in my opinion a better version of Jeopardy, will leave you addicted in minutes.

So, next time you're lounging around and avoiding writing a paper or studying for an exam, ditch Facebook and MySpace and stop by www.freerice.com.

Yesterday, the Web site reported users donated 134,515,640 grains of rice.

Imagine how many people you could feed and making the most of your laziness by testing your knowledge.

While your participation helps others, there's something in it for you, too.

"Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your education can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself," www.freerice.com reported. "Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide.