Geochemistry, geology, education in a digital world

Blog posts

2024

How science made me believe in Santa Claus

5 minute read

Published:

These days, I bounce ideas often with James Adams, an anthropologist who is also a postdoctoral researcher in the CLIMATE Justice Initiative. He has motivated me to read more of non-Latour authors about the topic of scales and Earth. Real growth since the last time I talked about Latour! Recently, our conversation has turned to information and the Internet. Our conversation reminded me about a secret that I have held for decades, but I am ready to come clean: Science made me believe in Santa Claus. Okay, let me explain.

2023

2022

Excel vs. IgPet. An informal geochemistry plotting showdown

14 minute read

Published:

Note from present day Thi (February 2024): This software/data narrative about my dissertation work was written in 2022 just a few months before I completely switched over to using R. Fascinating stuff.

Thoughts from reading Bruno Latour

2 minute read

Published:

I was recently encouraged to check out the book Science in Action, by a geoscience educator friend of mine. By happenstance, I stumbled upon a forum where Bruno Latour’s work non-human agency was referenced in relation to anthropomorphizing COVID. I usually don’t expect old philosophers’ writing to be immediately relevant in the year 2022, but in fact, Bruno Latour has been quite active, writing, speaking, and exploring new fields, all while emeritus. And it turns out Latour has picked up an interest in the Earth Sciences. In fact, he’s collaborated with geologists to propose an expansion of work on the Critical Zone. I was surprised to find on his website, several articles and lecture transcripts going back to at least 2016 about this topic.

2021

Introducing myself

1 minute read

Published:

Hi, my name is Thi. I am pursuing a doctorate in Geology. I seek to understand processes occurring in Earth’s interior, in the present-day, and ideally, the past. I have found that academic blogs in geology tend to fall into one of these categories….