save the world in 2 x 10^15 easy steps

FreeRice is distraction o' the day. The premise is you play a spot-the-synonym game and improve your vocabulary. There are ads on the page, and they claim to donate 10 grains of rice to charity for every question you get right. There's a counter on the side of the screen showing how 'generous' you are so far. There's no sign-up, and no restrictions on how long you play for.

Assuming they're being straight with us, my first thought is that the advertisers are getting fleeced. You load a new page (and new ads) with each answer, say every 30 seconds, and you're pretty intently focused on the middle of the screen. At 1024x768 (still on the laptop) the ads aren't even visible. I guess we're meant to be getting warm fuzzy feelings about the companies, but it seems more like a clever hack than a business model.

(Hmm, and they only pay out rice for correct answers. On the other hand I bet advertisers would pay double to be able to show ads to dumb people. I take it back, it's a brilliant strategy!)

The game itself is addictive. Knowing what the words mean is a plus, of course, but you can do pretty well boggling at prefixes and suffixes and word roots (periphrasis = circumlocution was a striking example).
And the 'feeding poor children' angle takes the edge off the 'should have stopped ten minutes ago' guilt. Ignoring for the moment that it takes more than 10,000 correct answers to make up the equivalent of a $US100 donation. (Figures from here).

american politics never fails to deliver

Check this out. Words fail me.

HuckChuckFacts @ YouTube - Mike Huckabee's first campaign ad.

edit: it's official - Ric Flair: "Mike Huckabee is the Man, Whooooo!"