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Twitterpated
Location: My own little world (also Canada)
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The Most Adorable Puzzle Ever (and beer is good for you)
I don't really have any discussion to put with this (so maybe it should be in nonsense; who knows?), but I wanted to put up one of the few happy news stories I see. The fact that there is non-bad news on the front page of a newspaper is almost news in itself.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...7722a1&k=53155
Also, beer is good for you apparently.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...2cf0da&k=36000
The full text is posted below in respective order.
Quote:
The letters "PKLZZG GMALQ, SKTT QFM OGXXQ OL?" are nonsense to nearly everyone.
To Vienna Augey, they're love letters.
On Monday, as she had every morning for a year, the 23-year-old sat down with her newspaper and attempted to crack the Decodaquote game on the puzzle pages of the Calgary Herald.
On this day the code, in which each letter represents another, forming a sentence, was a puzzling proposal. The solution: VIENNA AUGEY, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
"As the letters started to form my name, my heart skipped a beat," she said Tuesday.
"I couldn't believe it. I kept reading it over and over. I thought it was my imagination. Then, when I knew it was true, I cried."
In a newsprint version of the stadium scoreboard wedding proposal, University of Calgary student Ryan Harrison asked Augey, his girlfriend of nearly a year, to marry him.
"I wanted to do something out of the ordinary, unique like her and me," said Harrison, 22.
He set the wheels in motion three months ago, writing Decodaquote's author, Patience Rayn in Washington State, asking her to play along.
Rayn, who has been writing Decodaquotes since 1990, didn't give the first-time request a second thought.
"I am a hopeless romantic and was thrilled to be part of the conspiracy," said Rayn, whose puzzle appears in six papers in the United States and the Calgary Herald. Harrison, a student in University of Calgary's Computer Science program, asked Rayn to create a puzzle for Monday's paper using the words: YOU WILL FOREVER BE MY EVERYTHING. VIENNA AUGEY, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
He couldn't sleep Sunday night, worried about the code, wondering if all would go according to the plan he and Rayn had concocted via a handful of e-mails. At 6 a.m. Monday morning, an anxious Harrison hit the corner store and bought four copies of the Herald. Before picking up Augey for their jobs with the Boys and Girls Club, he tried the puzzle. It worked.
After their two-hour shift of walking children to school, the couple went to Augey's home, where she lives with her family, and settled into their morning routine of cracking Decodaquote.
"My heart was racing and Vienna was wondering why I wasn't helping as much as I usually do," Harrison said.
As the words began appearing, tears welled in Augey's eyes. Harrison dropped to one knee and pulled out a white gold diamond solitaire ring.
"He took my hands and told me that he loved me," recalled Augey, also a U of C student. "Then he asked the question. I was so overwhelmed he couldn't put the ring on my finger because I was hugging him so close."
Rayn, 64, is touched the plan was successful.
"I burst into happy tears," she said. "I've never been so emotionally involved since I ran my first puzzle."
By Tuesday afternoon, she'd had several e-mails from loyal "decoders" keen to know more about the couple, and whether Augey said yes. The nuptials are planned for August 2007.
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Quote:
MONTREAL -- Like wine, it seems beer has its virtues.
Studies strongly suggest that a compound found only in hops and the main product they're used in -- beer -- is effective in preventing many types of cancer. The darker the brew the higher the concentration of the active ingredient, Fred Stevens, professor of medicinal chemistry and researcher at the Linus Pauling Institute of Oregon State University, said Tuesday.
The flavonoid compound called Xanthohumol is toxic to prostate, breast, colon and ovarian cancer cells.
The potential applications for this micronutrient in cancer prevention and treatment is enormous, experts said.
However, don't go hoisting another pint or two just yet, Stevens said. "I don't recommend that. Moderate beer consumption lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease but that has nothing to do with flavonoids."
Studies using rats and test-tube cultures show Xanthohumol stops tumour growth at an early age, along with other anti-cancer properties.
"But we used a pure compound in cell cultures," Stevens said. "To go to humans is a big jump."
For one thing, it's not clear how much flavonoid can be absorbed from drinking beer. It's not known what remains of the compound after it passes through the human gut.
In the lab, even microscopic amounts can inhibit enzymes that can activate cancer growth as well as help the body detoxify carcinogens.
"Research in the area has exploded worldwide," said Stevens, who published a review of the literature in the journal Phytochemistry.
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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato
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