Child's Play Breaks a Million Bucks

Utoxin noted that Child's Play has raised the bar for their annual games for hospitals charity. They say "Not only did we break the million dollar mark, but we decimated it with our new total of $1,135,000! This significant achievement made this holiday season a happier, brighter one in our fifty partner hospitals. To everyone who has contributed to this amazing milestone, thank you! The hospital wish lists are still online, and some have seen new items added. While we try to get lots of new games and more to the children in time for the holidays, the hospitals have a need for equipment year-round. Likewise, we will continue to accept donations through Amazon, PayPal and the mail until next year's fundraiser kicks off."

Re:decimated?

[kalidasa]

"Decimated" means "killed every tenth," in other words, "lined everyone up and killed every tenth person in line." I suppose you could argue that $1M equals 90% of the actual total received, but I wouldn't use that particular metaphor myself.

Re:decimated?

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

"Decimated" means "killed every tenth," in other words, "lined everyone up and killed every tenth person in line."

That's the ancient, root definition, referring to the killing of every one man in ten of a mutinous Roman legion. The current English definition has been generalized to the destruction of some percentage of something.

But it's still inappropriately used in the summary. Commence the "!decimated" tagging...

Re:Um.

[meringuoid]

I wouldn't call 100,000 or so past their goal "decimating" anything

To decimate is to reduce by one tenth. It was a punishment for mutinous units in the Roman army, where all the men would be lined up and every tenth man executed.

Since their goal was 1,000,000, and they exceeded this by one tenth, their usage of the word 'decimated' is actually not too bad. All too often people use 'decimated' to mean 'completely destroyed', but at least here there's a factor of 0.1 involved.

Re:Gabe

[ashridah]

Actually, I'm pretty sure Child's play was started after Jack Thompson started his raving about how games only create deviants, and the Penny-arcade people wanted to show him up in a way that was more constructive than responding directly to his infantile arguments.

So far, Child's play has raised a huge amount of money, and helped make being hospitalized less sucky for lots of children, and given Gabe/Tycho a way to thumb their nose at Jack, which I'm all for. Not that it'll matter to Jack, mind you, since he's a raving lunatic, and incapable of dealing with rational arguments anyway.

ash