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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, July 15, 2004

UPDATE ON HAPPINESS:

HOPE FOR UD
AND OTHERS LIKE HER


UD has recently shared with her readers her happiness problem [see UD, 7/13/04, "The Question of Happiness"]. Strangely, no sooner had she mentioned it than scientists at Duke University discovered it's all genetic:

A single gene could be responsible for making some people naturally positive and happy while forcing others to be negative and gloomy. ... 'For the first time, we've identified a naturally occurring genetic difference that controls the production of serotonin in the brain."

UD greets this news with ambivalence. On the one hand, it means that she need no longer feel personally responsible for her high levels of well-being, which is a relief. On the other hand, plagued by thoughts of what she might have handed down to her daughter, UD has arranged to have her genetically screened.
Posted at: 7/15/2004 12:02:00 PM