Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague Archive 2009

Dear Colleague Archive 2009

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Archived Yi-Fu Tuan 'Dear Colleague' Letters
Date of Letter	Topic Summary	ID
2-January-2009	On the documentary "Standard Operating Procedure," and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
15-January-2009	Regarding Barack Obama, and looking the part
23-February-2009	On Bertrand Russell and Joesph Conrad: "Why the Russell-Conrad achievement is so rare is that complete mutual understanding and appreciation rest, not on fundamental similarity, but on fundamental and irreconcilable difference."
16-March-2009	On schools: "...Why this insistence of uniformity?"
26-March-2009	"But going against nature...is instinct without which we can never hope to truly grow and excel. After all, we all start in life under certain handicaps. Some are physical, others are cultural and social."
14-April-2009	Ghost stories and moral tales
6-May-2009	"I am beginning to wonder whether the least religious people...and the least compassionate are the fundamentalists of Islam and Christianity."
15-June-2009	"God, seeing how humans continue to be arrogant, was obliged to create something in nature that is not only difficult but impossible to understand—impossible, that is, for the limited human intelligence. And that thing is called consciousness."
1-July-2009	On the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth
20-July-2009	On my retirement, and wisdom
3-August-2009	"Among ethnics, the Chinese are undoubtedly a success story. Now, what accounts for the success? Why is it so difficult for other ethnics—especially the targeted minorities—to duplicate?"
17-August-2009	Of Narnia and geography: "A human being's fundamental attitude toward life may well be embodied in a story rather than in a creed or philosophy, and I would even argue that the story reveals more."
1-September-2009	On the Japanese amae. "Strange as it is to say, we need disasters—floods, droughts, and earthquakes—to remind us that we are not just products of Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene, that we are capable of heroism, of the most profound love for another, of making the ultimate sacrifice."
15-September-2009	About originality and its genesis: "[Geographers] don't have deadening spelt-out road maps as astronomers do, but we do have accepted research paths...The work so done is not likely to rise much above B-. It offers no surprise, no reason to shout 'Eureka!' "
18-September-2009	Experiences and reflections at a scholarship recption
1-October-2009	The illusion of privacy and the effects of being
24-October-2009	"...we humans are poetic animals–that we naturally assign human personality, motivation, and feeling to beings that don’t have them. The evidence lies in our language..."
14-November-2009	On an article by Jim Allard and UW campus diversity initiatives
24-November-2009	" Not being a philosopher, I confess that I never seriously wondered at the existence of the world...But this is not quite the whole story, for I do wonder at the existence of the people I meet every day."
5-December-2009	On the occasion of Yi-Fu Tuan's birthday, from readers
10-December-2009	The 4 qualities that have defined some great scientists
15-December-2009	Receiving an offical U.S. flag, and citizen power