Cryptocurrency

Say What?!

Hayter’s article for July 3, 2022

            I don’t know much about Economics, but I taught it in High School for about four years. It was a fun, but tough course to teach. I think Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, summed it up when he wrote the song “For What it’s Worth”. He included the lyric, “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”  

As I mentioned, I did enjoy teaching Economics. Unfortunately, I found that it required a lot of preparation. Planning would’ve been a lot easier had there been personal computers and the Internet. But, nooo. I was forced to read the Economics book. 

In class, I started out talking about the history of money. During the olden days, people just traded what they made, found or caught for something they didn’t have. It might be a cantaloupe in exchange for a sharpened stick. 

The question is, how did anyone come up with the idea to give value to certain rocks or shells? To help with the concept, I showed the classes an animated video on the subject of money. It was educational as well as a real hoot. 

Shortly into the video, there was a scene where an attractive cavewoman approached a guy in a palm tree trying to dislodge a coconut. The woman said, “Hi, Franky. How are your coconuts hanging?” – Franky said, “Fine Mary Ann, would you like one?” I couldn’t believe that the educational censoring committee hadn’t banned the video. No worries. No one noticed the coconut comment… except for Scott.

            Scott immediately interrupted. “Uh, Mr. Hayter. Could you play that part back? I was taking notes and missed something there.”

Good ol’ Scott. I replayed the scene. This time half the class caught on. After some whispering, a few others caught on and there was much laughter. I told everyone to, “Grow up! This stuff is important!” Scott asked if that scene was going to be on the test. I said, “Yes, bartering will be on the test.” The episode did make everyone pay more attention.

            That semester I had the students invest in the stock market. I credited each of them with $1000. I told those who could, to bring to class the financial section of the Chronicle. I once took them to the library to research different companies. What a waste of time. Fact-finding was much more challenging back then than today. 

As complicated as the stock market is, it’s easy peasy compared to the subject that caught my attention earlier today – Cryptocurrency. It’s make-believe money that can be purchased or traded by anyone with access to a computer. You begin by purchasing imaginary money with real money. After that, you can buy stuff with it or sell stuff in exchange for it. The value of your cryptocurrency is dependent entirely on the belief others have that the currency has value. 

The most common cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. In 2009, the year of Bitcoin, the estimated value of a single imaginary coin was 35/1000 of a cent. Later in the year, it went up when someone managed to purchase a Papa John’s Pizza for 10,000 Bitcoin.

The highest dollar value of one Bitcoin was $63,000 in November of 2021. The value has changed considerably since then.   

You can purchase Bitcoin from its founder Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows if it’s a he, she, or they. At the moment there are hundreds of other Cryptocurrencies spread all across the Globe. Or perhaps all of their headquarters are in Willis. No one knows for sure where they all are.   

        Cryptocurrency is merely a monetary concept. It’s not too unlike what we’ve been using for decades. Last week, I had to pay my mortgage, yet, I had only $10 in my wallet.

What I did was contact my bank online, and have them take, say, $1000 from my account and transfer it to the account of my mortgage company. I didn’t see a bit of the money. In fact, I’ve never seen any of the money that is in my bank account. Most of it came from my teacher's retirement. What TRS does is forward my bank a number signifying how much money they wish to put in my bank account. The computers don’t transfer cash. Just numbers.

        Since the advent of online banking and credit cards, little money changes hands nowadays. If you ever watched “It’s a Wonderful Life”, you know that banks do not have the hard cash to cover all their accounts. It’s been loaned out to people. No way does the U.S. government have enough cash to back all of the online currency.

        In other words, our monetary system is much like Cryptocurrency… with one big difference. Your bank is real people. And they’ve got your name and all of your info. That works both ways. As long as the banker treats you right, and you continue to keep your account in order, the more likely you’ll learn to trust each other.

        Of course, one big problem today is inflation. Blame it on COVID, the war in Ukraine, or corporate price gouging. Inflation happens. Always has and always will.

        The same is true of Cryptocurrency. The value of Cryptocurrency is more volatile than the value of the U.S. dollar. In November 2021, a bitcoin was worth $63,000. A few minutes ago it was worth $19, 064. Right now it’s worth – give me a second – Ah, $18,900. How low will it go? Who knows? I keep going back to Stephen Stills.

   

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hayter.mark@gmail.com

           

 

 

 

Liver News

Hayter’s article for June 26, 2022

“Liver News”

          Don’t you just hate it when life seems to be moving along in greased grooves and all of a sudden you learn something that kicks you right in the rear? -- If you have to think about that for more than two seconds, it’s never happened to you.

          I have several such episodes, the most recent occurring last Friday. I was sitting right where I am now doing stuff so important that I can’t remember what it was. Out of the blue, Kay yelled to me from the living room. I’ve been having trouble making sense from Kay’s distant voice.

I yelled back, “What?”  She then yells something that sounded like parts of the original yell. This caused me to leave my nest, and move my buns to the living room, where I said, “What sweetpea?” -- Kay replies, “Oh, you didn’t have to come in here. I just sent you something from YouTube that might help.” – “Ah. Thank you, darling. I enjoyed the visit,” is what I said.

          I couple of hours later, I pulled up what Kay forwarded. It had to do with fat livers. My doctor once told me that I have one of those. So Kay wanted me to hear from another doctor. The malnourished-looking gentleman was Dr. Sten Ekberg. He seemed as nice as could be, but his message came from purgatory.

It didn’t start out that way. He began by explaining why my liver ends up with a lot of fat on it. His explanation stunk on ice. When you eat something that the liver doesn’t know what to do with, it turns it into something bad and sends on down the line. Some of these things end up clogging your blood vessels. Your liver doesn’t know that it’s messing you up. It doesn’t have time to dawdle, so it just throws something together and moves it along. Reminds me of a job I used to have.

          Stuff like alcohol and certain prescription drugs confuse the liver. “What do I do with this stuff?” If those words ever cross your mind, it’s your liver talking to itself.

I fast-forwarded through much of what Dr. Ekberg discussed. The part I took notice of had to do with the foods that are bad for my liver. You may get by eating a small quantity of a bad thing. If I cut down on my intake of bread, I’ll be miserable, but my liver will love me. If I only eat a small cube of watermelon, that’s fine. However, if I have a seedless watermelon I can’t eat a small cube. Who can?

          I was okay with most of the stuff until he got to nuts. Turns out, it’s okay to eat the nuts you don’t care for. Walnuts? They’re okay, but sheeesh. I don’t care to eat a walnut unless it’s hidden inside a cake or pie.

When it comes to peanuts, I like ‘em. In my cabinet, I’ve got a stash of peanuts, some with shells and some without. It’s okay if I eat half a handful twice a week, but beyond that, I’m messin’ up my liver. Give me a break! 

You can imagine how upset I was about that. But you can’t imagine how ballistic I got when Sten Ekberg (Who names their kid, ‘Sten’?) mentioned the one nut that I must not eat in any quantity! -- The cashew! – I eat a cup of cashews three times a week. Three days before I saw Sten, I purchased another of those square plastic jars of unsalted cashews at Sam’s. I got unsalted because I knew that I needed to cut down on my salt. I had no idea that I needed to quit cashews altogether! (I know. Too many exclamation points!) 

So, there you have it. Just when I was getting to appreciate YouTube, something like this hits me right in the liver. And, I have Kay to blame. That girl even went to the trouble of explaining the information Ekberg gave that I refused to listen to. Crazy, it was! 

I didn’t know that the liver makes bile. I thought it was made in either my kidneys or pancreas. No, the liver makes bile and then shoots it to your gall bladder which shoots to either your stomach or intestines so you can digest your food. Without the liver, you’d have no bile, and without bile, you’d be so full of unprocessed food that you’d explode. I don’t think I could put up with that. 

If I keep eating cashews and all the other food that I like, my liver will have too much work to do sorting stuff out that it will just start moving it along to my gallbladder. Some of the stuff will produce gall stones. Some will start making enough triglycerides to clog the Grand Coulee. With the right kind of food intake, your liver or gallbladder can make stuff like Uranium 238. 

And that, my friend, is why cave-people seldom had any liver trouble. Same with Vikings, cowboys, Indians, Peruvians, and pioneers. Those people ate only what they could find. Since cashews grow in Brazil, our ancestors never touched them. Fat that cavemen and pioneers ate was good for them. Livers love fat. They turn it into bile. No fat, no bile; no bile, no go. No go, no toilet! 

Before I leave you, I’d like to thank Kay for destroying my life. I realize she meant well, but good grief! I’d also like to thank Dr. Sten Ekberg for his punch to my liver. 

There is still hope. I have every confidence that another “doctor” has already posted something on YouTube about how cashews are great for my liver. -- Give me a second. I’m going to look up “Benefits of Cashews”.--

That didn’t take long. I just found out that cashews are good for your bones, skin, eyes, heart, blood, and brains. I would have more faith in this doctor’s findings had he not added HAIR!  If that were true, I’d have hair down to my heels. – No, I have no faith in the pro-cashew doctors. Now, I’m thinking of Captain Kirk and his anger toward Khan. I can feel the Captain’s pain. --     

 “STEN!!!!”  

         

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hayter.mark@gmail.com

 

 

Value of Internet

Hayter’s article for June 19, 2022

“Smartening up”

          I’ve done some dumb stuff in my life, but I’m getting smarter by the day. -- Oh, yes I am. I’m almost as smart as an octopus.

Yesterday morning, I turned on my computer as always and visited my usual Firefox site. It was there that I saw an assortment of titled photos, one of which was that of an octopus. Accompanying the picture were the words “How smart is an octopus?” 

I learned a lot about octopi that morning, my friend. Did you know that they have six arms and two legs? I doubt they even know which two are legs. Had I not visited the octopi site, I would’ve gone to my grave not knowing about the smart alecks. They’re characters, all right.

When I was teaching, I knew a lot of stuff. I could’ve told you who was in the President’s Cabinet. You never know when a kid is going to ask you something like that. They never did, so I had to bring the names up in conversation. After I retired I began studying things that I didn’t have time to research before. It’s so easy to do now.  All the info that you didn’t ask for, now just pops up on my computer screen. So now, I’m learning stuff that I never knew I wanted to know.

          So, right now, I’m going to show you what I mean. Quieten down and try not to crowd me! Here we go.  – Look at this. Right off the bat, we see a way to keep food cool without a refrigerator. It involves two clay pots, sand, and water… Okay, I just scanned it and found it not worth our time.  I may try it when my refrigerator dies or is murdered. At the moment the ice maker is testing me. It has a mind of its own.

          I love quotes. Here’s one from Michael J. Fox. It involves something aimed at marriage. Michael said, “The key to our marriage is to realize that it's not how our similarities work together; it's how our differences work together.”

          So, true. Yesterday I ate a small bowl of shrimp salad that Kay made for herself. It wasn’t all that much, so I figured she had already eaten hers. She hadn’t. When she noticed it was gone, she went all Glenn Close on me. And why? Because we’re similar in the fact that we both like shrimp salad.

Had it been a leafy green salad with vinaigrette oil all over it, there would’ve been no problem, because I don’t like wacky salads. I’ve never had trouble stealing something from Kay that she didn’t like. That’s what Fox meant about working out your differences. Possibly.

          Moving along, look to the right and you’ll see a picture of someone pouring a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola into the gas tank of a Chevy. Don’t anybody try this until I see how it comes out.

Wow! This guy was desperate to get noticed on the Web!  He poured the Coke into the gas tank and drove the Chevy to see if Coke is still the Real Thing when used in gasoline. It’s not. His car died after a couple of minutes on the road. The guy paid $135 for a mechanic to determine the damage to the car. The mechanic told him that to remove the Coca-Cola from every affected portion of the engine would cost him $1500, and if any part of the engine had to be replaced due to the Real Thing, it would cost him a few thousand more.

          I could’ve died happily not knowing any of that. But, nooo.  I just had to read it.  Beg your pardon? -- “What luck would you have with Dr Pepper in your gas tank?” – “Hmm, Dr Pepper won’t work well at all. And, no, I’m not sure about Root Beer. Andy, if you don’t mind, I’m leaving this topic.”    

Next is a picture of Tom Hanks with the caption “Tom Hanks explains it all.” I don’t know about you, but I would like to hear the explanation of “it all.” Give me a minute.  --  Forget it. I was sent to an article in the New York Times about the upcoming movie “Elvis”. Tom Hanks plays Col. Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager. I’ve seen the previews, and from what little I saw, I thought the Elvis actor was great. But as far as Tom Hanks explaining it all? Another time, maybe.  

          Whoa! Here’s a picture of a guy standing next to a Great Dane. A “dog”, not Danish royalty. The dog is currently the largest dog in the world. From its shoulders to the ground it is 44 inches high. Keep in mind that the dog has a head and neck that isn’t a part of that measurement. When on its hind legs, the critter is over seven feet tall. The dog is only three years old, and a Great Dane’s lifespan is seven to eight years.

          For the past week, Kay has been taking care of the neighbor’s pug. She is the ugliest dog on the planet. It was bred to be ugly. The breed is low to the ground and has a smashed nose that makes its breathing a real struggle. Molly is constantly panting and trying to clear her throat. I feel sorry for the dog, but I just don’t like to look at her.  

          That being said, if need be, Kay would try to adopt the dog. The thought of keeping a pug in our house is viewed differently by Kay and me. Which makes the point that I now see what Michael J Fox meant by the importance in a marriage of having our differences work together.

          Okay, that’s it. You’re now free to learn stuff on your own. I recommend you study the boa constrictor. The thing sleeps between meals.

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hayter.mark@gmail.com