Who's not surprised?

Apparently there is a correlation between drinking diet soda and "metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels — and elevated blood pressure." Really. They do point out that these symptoms may just be the lifestyle associated with diet soda drinkers, and not something directly caused by diet soda.

I'm not surprised. Unless you drink it for the taste, in which case your taste buds need some adjustment, you have to be pretty naive to drink diet soda. It's not any better for you (apparently, it could be worse) than regular soda. In my rather limited experience, people who drink diet soda tend to have intensely unhealthy lifestyles, characterized by poor diet and a lack of exercise. So any of you diet drinkers reading this, please switch to water and start exercising. Actually, cutting soda or diet soda out of your diet is almost guaranteed to lose you 10 lbs.

What am I actually surprised about? I'm going to San Diego for a week in July. I am the only graduate student in the Tufts chapter of SIAM (society for industrial and applied mathematics) who is neither graduating nor getting married this summer. Since someone from the club should go, that makes me it. May I point out that I don't do industrial or applied mathematics? I'm not even particularly interested! (I went to the meeting for the pizza.) But I've never been to San Diego, the chapter will cover most of my expenses, and at the moment I have nothing better to do this summer. So what the hell...