Chloe Kim has suffered mentally ( see later interview ) and physically, a serious shoulder injury only a month ago.  However, she yesterday qualified for the snowboarding halfpipe event.  She thus will today  compete for the gold medal.  But I'll let you watch that event in peace. Was born 26 years ago in Torrance, California.   Her parents emigrated  to the U.S. from South Korea in 1982. Her father started working at minimum-wage jobs to save money for college. He went on to study engineering at El Camino College in Torrance, working nights as a machinery operator. Jon Jin and Boran Yun had two earlier daughters, with Chloe born in 2000.  Father likes to say that she was born in the year of the dragon (I was born in 1940, also a dragon year), one reason for her precocity. Chloe began snowboarding at 4 at the Southern California resort of Mountain High. Her parents bought her first snowboard for $25 on eBay. Initially trained by her father studyin...

Before I go into seabed minerals, a bit about the  Winter Olympics.  There will be a lot to see today, for the USA had only two total medals as of yesterday.    Here is the current medals standing .  We're up to 11. Olympics Medal Leaders Gold Silver Bronze Total Norway Italy United States 7 4 4 2 2 5 4 7 2 13 13 11 For details, go to the official   Milano Cortina Winter Games page . First, some background about my experience with seabed mining.  My professional career was great, but frustrating in one particular area. To begin, my PhD is in biochemical engineering. I began teaching/researching at the University of Hawaii in 1972. I worked in the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1982. I returned to the University of Hawaii, and in 1984 became director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute.  HNEI was co-center with the University of Mississippi as the Department of Interior's Marine Mineral Technology Center, which focused on seabed mining and relate...