No, this is not about a newly formed Rice Liberation Movement or a deal at the local Chinese restaurant. FreeRice.com is a website that allows you to put some rice where your mouth is! Yeah, that does sound a lot like eating but, really, this is even better. You play a simple (and highly addictive) word game, expand your vocabulary (for fun and bragging rights!) and, oh yeah, get to help feed the world through the World Food Programme.
Every right answer you get automatically donates ten grains of rice to the World Food Programme. That may not sound like a lot but since its inception, the site has donated almost 100 billion grains of rice and adds millions more every single day all based on, in my opinion, people wanting to beat their previous score (level 49, you haunt me so!) and help the world a little bit.
If vocabulary enhancement isn’t your cup of rice, there’s a subject tab at the top of the page so you can play games ranging from chemical symbol recognition, to basic math, to geography, to art identification. So, geek out, click away and help feed the world’s most needy!
-Danielle, Tech Services
Junior Kimbrough
I recently found the Mississippi Hill Country Blues musician Junior Kimbrough and I’m excited to have found another style of Mississippi Blues. Kimbrough simply uses the steady repetition of a single chord with a drum accompaniment that creates a driving, rhythmic beat. You add his vocals to the mix and have some powerfully hypnotic music. The African influenced drumming adds an interesting dimension to the blues and I’m looking forward to finding similar country blues artists. Junior Kimbrough’s albums can be found here.
-Mike, Reference
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
This book traces the last thirty-five years of life in the United States through an eclectic mix of biographical and geographical profiles. Packer paints arresting, astute portraits of familiar figures like Colin Powell, Elizabeth Warren, Raymond Carver, Jay-Z, Robert Rubin, and Oprah, and then takes more in-depth inventory of anonymous American lives. These include a factory worker-turned-activist, an erstwhile company man who became a struggling entrepreneur, a formerly apolitical engineer who transformed into a Tea Party organizer, and the city of Tampa—which went from “America’s Next Great City” in 1985 to the epicenter of foreclosures in 2008.
Perhaps the most entertaining section covers the trajectory of Jeff Connaughton, a longtime Biden staffer who later cashed out as lobbyist, then wrote a damning exposé of the Capitol Hill-K Street-Wall Street alliance. (See also: “Biting the hand that feeds you.”) It’s an intriguing psychological study of an underling who initially hopes that proximity will equal power, settles for respect, gets neither, then gets greedy. And let’s just say that Biden is more Joe Pesci in Goodfellas than Crazy Uncle Joe here.
What could have been a diffuse, messy exercise is held together by Packer’s artistry and easy command of the material’s complexity. Plus, his writing is simply outstanding: simultaneously humane and dispassionate, diplomatic yet acerbic. This is excellent stuff.
-Megan, Reference
Trouble Will Find Me by The National
The Ohio-based Indie band The National is known for their melancholic and somewhat somber lyrics, but vocalist Matt Berninger has admitted in a recent interview that they “have never been cool” -- oh, but I beg to differ. Their sixth and latest album is full of thought-provoking lyrics, regret, and secret concessions that are tied up together with visceral rhythms and beats. It’s an atmospheric record that you could take on an introspective road trip and get lost in; my favorite so far is “Sea of Love”. Trouble Will Find Me is available through SWAN.
-Judy, Reference
