We Can Remember It for You Wholesale

I just watched the latest movie of Total Recall. This is a remake of one my favorite movies from the early '90s and one of my favorite stories from Phillip K. Dick, "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale".

This movie stars Colin Farell as Doug Quaid/Hauser, which was done by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original movie. Kate Beckinsale plays Quaid's wife which was originally played by Sharon Stone. Jessica Biel plays Quaid's girlfriend Melina, which was originally played by Rachel Ticitin.

Obviously, no one can replace Arnold in this classic Arnold role. However, in this retelling of the story, Collin Farrell does a great job playing the character of Doug Quaid. He is very likable and brings a certain intensity to the role.


This movie had nothing to do with Mars, which was the main point of the original movie and story. Instead, this movie takes place on an earth where most of it is uninhabitable due to chemical warfare. The only habitable places left are the U.K. and Australia. There is an elevator that goes through the center of the Earth so that people may commute between the two locations. The movie mostly follows the original movie and gives some nods to the original. Both movies are fairly different from the original story but follow the same theme of the guy who goes to Recall or Rekall to have memories implanted, only to find that there are already memories implanted and that the procedure blows the memory cap in place, releasing all kinds of mayhem.

I kind of expected that the end of the new movie, Quaid would find a way to remove the chemical contamination that was inflicting most of the Earth due to the fact that Cohaagan, the Earth's dictator, had a secret way to repair it but was keeping it hidden so he could control the people.



This movie is really good. It follows the Blues Brothers formula of wreckage and mayhem. Many modern police cars are destroyed along with many RoboCops. The story still remains smart and intense. I very much enjoyed it and give it 5 stars out of 5.

What About the Judges?

One of the more difficult things going through the ballot is going through all the judges. Below are links and info on each of the judges that come up in the Tulsa County ballot.

Oklahoma Supreme Court

Judge	Appointed By	Served Since
Noma Gurich	Brad Henry (D)	2011
Noma Gurich	George Nigh (D)	1986
James Edmondson	Brad Henry (D)	2003
James Edmondson	Brad Henry (D)	2003

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

Judge	District	Appointed	Governor	Law School	Hometown
Clancy Smith	1st	2010	Brad Henry (D)	University of Tulsa	Tulsa, OK
Arlene Johnson (Vice)	4th	2005	Brad Henry (D)	University of Oklahoma	Oklahoma City, OK
David Lewis	5th	2005	Brad Henry (D)	University of Oklahoma	Ardmore, OK

Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals

Justice	Birthplace	Year Service Began	Appointing Governor	Law School
Thomas Thornbrugh
William Hetherington	Norman, Oklahoma	2009	Brad Henry (D)	Oklahoma City University
Kenneth Buettner	Oklahoma City, Oklahoma	1996	Frank Keating (R)	Southern Methodist University
Robert Bell (Chief Judge)	Norman, Oklahoma	2005	Brad Henry (D)	University of Tulsa
E. Bay Mitchell, III	Enid, Oklahoma	2002	Frank Keating (R)	University of Oklahoma

Useful Election Links for Tulsa Election - Nov, 2012

I've put together some useful links for voting in Tulsa County. On the state questions, I tried to find something on each side of the issue, but some just don't have a decent web presence. Anyways, please make an informed vote on each item. Your comments are appreciated as well as your opinions on any of the items below.

Where do I vote?

US House
Jim Bridenstine (R)
John Olson (D)
Craig Allen (I)

Election Resources
Tulsa County Pricinct Map
Tulsa County District Map
Tulsa County State Senate Map
Tulsa County State House Map
Tulsa County Sample Ballots
List of Tulsa County Elected Officials

Vision 2
Vision 2 Summary
Tulsa World Article on Vision 2
Tulsa Beacon Editorial Against Vision 2
Vision 2 Wish List

State Questions
Summary of State Questions
Another Summary
State Question 758 Explanation. (Cap on property taxes)
Article on 758
State Question 759 (Ban on Affirmative Action)
For 762 (Remove governor from parole hearings on non-violent crimes)
Gov. Fallin Against 762
764
For 764
Against 764
765
766 (Intangiable Tax Ban)

Why are gas prices going down?

      As you may have noticed, gas prices have been slowly coming down. Normally, for the Memorial Day weekend and through the summer, gas prices go up due to increased demand and refineries switching over to summer gas. What we are seeing is more oil in the interior of the U.S. due to extra oil production through shale oil and gas production. There is enough production that the Seaway Pipeline flow was reversed. The Seaway pipeline runs from Cushing, OK to Houston, TX. Normally, it takes oil from Houston to refineries in Cushing, OK. Now, since there is actually a glut of oil in the interior of the U.S, the pipeline is taking oil from Cushing, OK to Houston. The extra oil is causing prices to slowly drop.

Seaway pipeline sends oil to Texas in historic reversal

Confessions of a Global Warming Agnostic

Sometimes I wonder. What if Al Gore is right? What if man made global warming is real and those poor polar bears are about to fall into the ocean and drown? Obviously, we should do something about it!

What we should obviously do is encourage forms of energy that don't produce as much carbon dioxide. We obviously should encourage more nuclear and hydroelectric power by removing the barriers that exist in their expansion. Yes, there are safety and environmental issues with both these types of energy, however, these risks can be mitigated through good engineering practices and proper risk analysis.

I believe the free market will push us towards these technologies. The cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear (4 cents/kwh) and hydroelectric(3 cents/kwh) is less then any other form of energy, except for coal (4 cents/kwh). Compare that with the cost of solar (22 cents/kwh), natural gas (10 cents/kwh) and wind (8cents.kwh). (see Comparing Energy Costs of Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Wind and Solar by James Morgan) Of all these energy sources, they are a lot less carbon intensive. Nuclear and hydro-electric lead the way and are on the same level as solar and wind.

Energy Source	Greenhous Gasses*
Coal	900
Oil	850
Gas combined-cycle	400
Biomass	45
Multi-crystaline silicon (solar)	37
Cadmium teruride (solar)	18
Nuclear	24
Wind	11
*(grams/kwh of Co2 equivalent)

From How Free is Solar? by Sandra Upson

My view is that we should just allow nuclear and hydroelectric to be further developed. We don't even need to subsidize them. We just need to stay out of their way. We obviously should not remove any safety or environmental requirements, but we should remove those that are simply put in place to prevent their development.

I do realize that I am blaspheming against the Holy Order of Mother Earth Fanatics. Nuclear and hydro-electric (aka damn power) are cardinals sins. I know that now I must ask forgiveness of the high priest and prophet himself, Al Gore. But then again, I am just a global warming agnostic. I neither believe nor do I disbelieve. I am just saying, that if it's really as bad Al Gore says it is, we should move our energy production  to ways that are less carbon intensive.

The technology for nuclear and hydro-electric is here now. We don't have to wait for someone to invent the perpetual motion machine, or for wind, solar, hydrogen, switch-grass or whatever else to become more commercially viable.

Worst Cartoons Ever

Since I did a post for world's greatest cartoons, I thought I would tell you about the worst cartoons ever. I am only going to include cartoons that I've seen. These are ones that cause me serious pain to watch, kind of like watching Jersey Shores. I can feel brain cell die when I watch these. I am sure there are many more hideous cartoons out there and I would sure like to know if I have left any off.

Pokemon - I never watched this as a kid. My youngest son loves this show and it makes me hurl every time I see it.



Battle of the Plannets - This is one that I only watched a few times as a kid. This one was so bad that it left me scarred for life. I blame all my problems in life on this cartoon. This is a bad Japanese mix of Star Wars and the X-Men. The problem back then is we did not have 10 different 24-7 cartoon networks that we could just change to, so I would just sit and watch it. Of course it wouldn't occur to me to turn off the TV and do something better. I still have nightmares about  the R2-D2 knockoff, 7-Zark-7, coming to torment me.



Johnny Bravo - A big dumb guy who talks like an Elvis impersonator and his "crazy" stalker type antics to try to pick up "the honeys". Seriously painful to watch.


Any cartoon that featured Scrappy Doo - I love Scooby Doo. I just hate Scrappy Doo. I think everyone hates Scrappy Doo which is why he ended up being the bad guy in that Scooby Doo movie. I also really hated his cousin Scooby Dum.



The Wonder Twins, Zan and Zayna - It was these two that made the SuperFriends suck more than most other cartoons. When I was a kid, I loved Superman, Batman, pretty much all the SuperFriends. Whenever they had those stupid wonder dummies go on, I really felt robbed. They are, essentially, the Scrappy Doo of DC Comics. And if those two weren't dumb enough, they had to add that stupid monkey.




ThunderCats - What was bad about this show is that not only did I hate it, but it was my friend's favorite show, so I ended up watching this show a lot. It had such clever names for characters, like Lion-o, Panthro, Tygra, WilyKit and WilyKat, and Snarf. The show was just incredibly stupid.



She-ra - If He-Man and the Masters of the Universe weren't bad enough, they had to go do a girl version of He-Man.

Proposed Soundtrack for The Hunger Games

I just saw the move "The Hunger Games" and loved it. I've read all the books in the series and I thought that the movie did the book justice. This is very rare for a movie that is derived from a book. However, when I was watching this film, I had some songs go through my head that I felt would be more appropriate for the film, and here they are.

First off, when you see the screaming fans in the Arena, they should be playing AC/DC's classic "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)"

When we first see Cinna and that he is being played by Lenny Kravitz, I think that they should have played his song "Fly Away". I think that it would have been very appropriate for the movie as well.

I personally thought the phrase that President Snow used in his speech to kick off the Hunger Games, "May the odds be ever in your favor" is kind of silly, since he kind of set the odds to begin with. He should have said something more appropriate like "For those about to die, we salute you". I think it would have been more historically ironic. Anyways, that brings us to another AC/DC song, "For Those About to Rock".

And finally, when Katnis and Peeta are talking about death and trying to make it through the games, the main song that kept going through my head was Iron Maiden's "Die With Your Boots On".