Here's another do-good-while-wasting-time word site: givevaccines.org. Like freerice.com it's a multiple-choice game, which presents you with a word and four possible meanings. Every time you guess the correct meaning, .01ml of vaccine is donated to the GAVI Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to making vaccines available to the world's poorest countries.

It's not quite as elegant as freerice, which has a broader assortment of English words. But Givevaccines has a unique option: in addition to "English words" there's a "medical terms" category. Not being a doctor I'd never heard of most of these, but I enjoyed guessing meanings based on the root and learning some new words in the process.

Thanks to quotato, who was the first to find givevaccines, and to Dr. Sam Rabinowitz, the creator of the site, who wrote to enlist our help. If any Wordies want to either create new questions or proof existing ones, send contributions to contact@givevaccines.org.

Labels: Dr. Sam Rabinowitz, freerice.com, GAVI Alliance, givevaccines.org, quotato

Not that I don't love lists like this, but we've all long wanted more ways to sort through and view the river of comments on the front page. So I just added a page listing the most active threads of the past 24 hours, as dreamed up by Prolagus a few weeks ago.

They're listed in order of the number of comments on the item (words, lists, and profiles), and show excerpts of the three most recent comments.

This needs some work--I'd like to add different ways to sort, make it look nicer, and include comments on tags, which I forgot. But better half baked than nothing, and this way you guys can tell me where it should go.

Though before I revisit this, I'll add a most commented on list to the front page, which is a fantastic idea (thanks pterodactyl!).

I just added this same post on comments, in case people would rather discuss refinements to this in situ.

Labels: comments, features, prolagus, pterodactyl

A million thanks to whichbe for teaching us all how to flip our fonts, and to Reverse Fad Productions (great name) for being an enabler.

Upside-down and chained_bear's little gift to Prolagus just made my evening.

Labels: Reverse Fad Productions, tappen, upside-down

I don't usually pay much attention to newspapers-are-dying stories. Yes, they are, and it's a bummer, but whining about it is typically more part of the problem than the solution.

This elegy by Timothy Egan, though, is worth reading.

Labels: New York Times, newspapers, Timothy Egan