Keystroke power bluetooth keyboard

With the popularity of the Hanx Writer, it got me thinking about typewriters - something I hadn't thought about in quite a while! I remember my Dad had an old manual one. By comparison to today's ultra thin keyboards, the keystroke was really long - but I remember my Dad typing on it pretty fast.

I wonder if you could harness the power of the keystroke to power a bluetooth keyboard? Maybe the carriage return lever could be used to 'rev it up' & connect via bluetooth. Not sure it's too useful, but it'd be cool...

* I vaguely remember a conversation about this with a buddy of mine several years ago. Remember this Radney?

Taxes: Part 1 - National Sales Tax

While there are certainly some people that hate all taxes, I accept taxes as something you need to operate a nation. I'd guess that taxes 'as a concept' don't bother people as much as the implementation, especially:
1) The crazy complicated method we have of calculating taxes
2) The crazy stuff the tax money is spent on

But taxes aren't only for collecting revenue - they also can be used to influence behavior. Because citizens/corporations will try to avoid paying taxes - and they'll try hard!

We're running a deficit big time. Not fair at all to the younger generations. And we probably can't make ends meet just by cutting spending. We need more revenue. Here my first suggestion:
• Add a national sales tax

Not much - no more than 3%. And exempt, food, clothing, shelter - all the necessities. In general, sales taxes are regressive, so it shouldn't be too high. This will increase revenues, and is easy to collect since retail operations are already set up to deal with state sales taxes.

But here's the twist on it that could have some influence:
• If a company has it's headquarters and manufacturing in the US (and pays it's corporate taxes) then their products are sales tax free.

This might stem the tide of corporate inversions, and actually get some manufacturing jobs back into the US...

A Personal Car-Integrated Shopping Cart

You know how the wheeled legs of an ambulance stretcher automatically fold up when the stretcher is pushed into the back of the ambulance? It'd be cool to use that same concept for a personal shopping cart in your automobile.

So, the car (a hatchback style, or Minivan/SUV) would come with it's own shopping cart. The cart could be branded too, so you could walk through the grocery with your <insert brand> cart - good advertising.

Everything in the store would happen the same way. You'd check out at the cash register, they'd load you bags into your cart. Then you'd go to the parking lot, open the hatch, and just push the cart right into the back of the vehicle, and close the hatch.

I guess you could then wheel the cart into the kitchen at home, but the wheels might be dirty. Anyway, it'd save unloading into the car, putting the cart into the cart bin, etc. And if it caught on, the stores wouldn't have to have so many carts & people dealing with the carts...