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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)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

DID UD INTRODUCE THIS GUY
TO SPENSER’S FAERIE QUEENE?




Adam Kidan, a GWU grad, was once a source of pride at the university. In 1998, he was the invited speaker in the high-profile Hoffman Lecture series at GW’s business school -- a successful entrepreneur, a model for students…





Yet even then, Kidan was not only a business failure, but possibly a mobster.

There seems to have been a breakdown in communication somewhere along the line at the business school, then, unless they considered a man long under investigation for involvement in a mafia hit job , and now a major player in the about-to-explode Jack Abramoff scandal, a model.

Did UD have this guy in one of her Intro Lit classes? Did they savor together the sweetness of Spenser’s lines? As he reflects upon his twisted life, does Kidan now (thanks to UD!) find himself reciting

Led with delight, they thus beguile the way,
Vntill the blustring storme is ouerblowne;
When weening to returne, whence they did stray,
They cannot finde that path, which first was showne,
But wander too and fro in wayes vnknowne,
Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene,
That makes them doubt, their wits be not their owne:
So many pathes, so many turnings seene,
That which of them to take, in diuerse doubt they been