I rode my bicycle half way to Pullman and back after work to make up for the donuts somebody brought in for their birthday ….

Indeed :-). Much of the “standard” diet of computing nerds (pop and candy bars) is in fact corn syrup in different forms. That, plus the habit of sitting in chairs staring at screens all day, isn’t the healthiest of lifestyles. One could argue that that putting the candy in the lab wasn’t exactly helping, but at least the money went to a good cause.

So, Mountain Dew is to be thought of as corn syrup with caffeine. I see. We have an old UNIX geek down the hall who has a stack of Mountain Dew cans big enough to build a cubicle … maybe he already has.

Yup, corn syrup. A dominant sweetener and certainly one of the most common forms of sugar consumed in the western world. Most candy is congealed corn syrup in one form or another, and pop is much the same but in liquid form. Sadly, most fruit drinks (as opposed to fruit juices) are also mostly corn syrup with flavors and colors added.

Corn syrup.

Corn syrup?