Recapping the Heroes season finale, making money off the Olympics and what Pluto has been up to since its planet status was ripped from it

- For the next two-plus weeks, the Winter Olympics will be taking over your television and the sports world in general. But the Olympics aren’t just about sports; they’re also about companies looking to cash in on the Olympics and boost their bottom line in conjunction. InteraXon is one such company, as the Canadian technology firm has created what it calls the "largest thought-controlled computing installation." In short, it’s people using their brain waves to control the lights at three major landmarks in Canada, including Niagara Falls. Never mind that most people don’t use their brainwaves for their intended functions, i.e. to live productive lives and not be morons, but now you want visitors to the Olympics to control lights using their brain waves? Okay. "When people put on the headsets and find themselves increasing the brightness of the lights by just thinking about it, you can almost see their brains explode," says Trevor Coleman, chief operating officer for InteraXon. Then again, touch and voice recognition have become a major part of the user interface in smartphones, so perhaps harnessing brainwaves or other biological data is not that far-fetched. Already, companies such as NeuroSky produce headphones that promise to translate the gamer's brainwaves into action on screen. InteraXon's gadgetry is spread across three sites: Toronto's CN Tower, Ottawa's Parliament Buildings and Niagara Falls. At each location, two chairs are set up, each with its own headset. Those headsets are equipped with an external probe that touches the wearer's forehead to measure the baseline brain activity. I wonder what would happen if that probe was in contact with the foreheads of some of the tools I deal with on a daily basis, people with no discernable brain activity, but I digress…..the chairs are also rigged to offer tactile feedback as users enter the desired brain state. The headset then measures the brain's electrical output and reacts to alpha waves, associated with relaxation, and beta waves, which indicate concentration. Users sit and either relax or focus their thoughts and the computer then sends a message to the site they are viewing. From there, InteraXon's software translates those thoughts to commands that will change the lighting display. Simply by concentrating, users can cause the lights at the CN Tower spin faster or change the brightness of the lights at Niagara Falls. "To achieve the beta state we ask users to focus on things like an object ahead and its details, while for an alpha response we ask them to take a deep breath and relax to let their mind go," Coleman stated. "But after a minute or two of trying it, we found most users no longer require the physical cues," says Coleman. InteraXon expects more than 2,000 visitors to try the device during its two-week run. What purpose is served by controlling lights with your mind, I don’t know, but at least it is unique…………

- The fourth season of Heroes finally came to an end and like the rest of the season, the finale was a bit of a letdown. In actuality, the episode was a good one, but in the paradigm that season finales are viewed through, it fell short. Basically, the quality of the finale is what the quality should have been for the rest of the season leading up to it and the finale itself should have been even better. Things commenced right where the last episode left off, with Noah Bennet and daughter Claire trapped inside a trailer buried 40 feet below the ground by Samuel Sullivan before he and his band of super-powered carneys picked up and left for Central Park to roll out Samuel’s grand plan for their “coming out party.” Noah, a.k.a. H.R.G.’s, partner Lauren walks on the ground above where the trailer is buried, but she has no idea what’s below her feet. Out in California, Peter Petrelli has just finished extricating former nemesis Sylar from the mental prison that Matt Parkman trapped him in and the two are ready to leave Parkman’s house to go find Samuel and stop his plan to use Peter’s friend Emma to help him kill thousands of people to prove his point. The problem is Parkman, who stands in their way. First, Parkman must battle Samuel’s henchman Eli, the replicating man who Samuel has sent to keep Peter and Sylar from interfering. Parkman attempts to use his power of mind control to push thoughts on Eli, but the tactic doesn’t work on the clone versions, only on the original Eli, who is hard for Parkman to pinpoint. The other half of Samuel’s plan is unfolding in Central Park, where the Sullivan Brothers carnival is set up. Samuel delivers a stirring oration to his “family” and asks Emma to user her power to draw people in with her musical skills to gather the crowd he intends to kill. When Emma realizes that this is exactly what Peter tried to warn her about, she refuses to play and rather than try to trick her, Samuel simply uses the Puppet Man, Eric Doyle, to compel her to do so. While Emma plays, Hiro Nakamura finally finds his way back on screen (it’s been what, two or three episodes?). He’s in the hospital, still recovering from emergency brain surgery. When he wakes up, he tells his pal Ando that they need to get back to work. Those plans are interrupted when a nurse hands Hiro a paper crane and a note from another patient, asking him to come visit her. Knowing that only his beloved Charlie would send a paper crane, Hiro rushes off to find her. He tracks her down, but there is a catch: Charlie is an old woman, in her 80s. She explains that one of Samuel’s carneys, the now-deceased time traveler Arnold, met her outside the Burnt Toast diner in Texas and sent her back in time to 1944, where she appeared on a street corner in snowy Milwaukee. There, she worked in a munitions factory and built a life. The scene then shifts back to Parkman’s house, where the trio of Parkman, Sylar and Peter has subdued Eli and are now facing off against one another. Parkman vows to not allow Peter and Sylar to leave because he’s sure that Sylar is still the über-villain he’s always been. That predicament is nothing compared to what H.R.G. and Claire are facing. He has realized that Samuel’s plan in trapping them was for Claire to have to watch her own farther die because while he would not be able to survive the lack of oxygen, her ever-healing lungs would continue to regenerate. As H.R.G begins to lose consciousness, a miracle arrives in the form of Tracy Strauss, who we haven’t heard from in several episodes. She uses her power to turn herself into water and makes her way down through the ground to the trailer. Once there, she and Claire carry H.R.G. to the tunnel she’s created and after liquefying again, Tracy is able to float H.R.G. and Claire to the surface. There, Tracy is nowhere to be found but Lauren is waiting with a helicopter to take the three of them to Central Park. As for Hiro and Charlie, his plan is to go back in time to 1944, find Charlie and transport her back to her original life, post-2000. Meanwhile, everyone converges on Central Park for the season’s climactic finale. Claire, H.R.G. and Lauren arrive first. Sylar and Peter show up too, having convinced Parkman to let them go by allowing him to look inside Sylar’s mind to see if he really has changed. Convinced he has, Parkman lets them leave, then goes to work on Eli. He pushes thoughts into Eli’s mind, telling him to do exactly as Parkman says. In Central Park, H.R.G. also calls Ando, telling him that he and Hiro are needed there. After making the call, H.R.G. is intercepted by knife-wielding, super-speed carney Edgar, whom he interrogated and formed a sort of bond with earlier in the season. Edgar pulls H.R.G. aside into an empty tent and the two men realize that they have the same goal – stopping Samuel by any means necessary. Edgar asks H.R.G. what the plan is, ready to play his part. Over at the hospital, Hiro finds himself at a crossroads. After talking to Charlie, he realizes she has had a great life already, having gotten married in 1944, having four kids and seven grandchildren and accumulated a lifetime of great memories. Hiro decides she’s where she needs to be, with her family. He bows out, decides this quest is done for him and teleports to Central Park with Ando. At the park, Sylar fulfills Peter’s prophetic dream from earlier in the season by attempting to help Emma. However, he is caught by Doyle and held along with Emma and she’s forced to continue playing her cello to draw people into the carnival. Sylar attempts to convince Doyle to let Emma go, but he declines. Instead, Sylar is able to divert Doyle’s attention long enough for Emma to use her power to control sounds and colors to zap Doyle, knocking him down and allowing Sylar to break free from his grasp and use one of his powers – telepathy – to gain control of Doyle. Sylar holds him there, choking him, and when Doyle reminds Sylar that he is a killer and a bad guy, Sylar counters that he has changed and is now a hero. Out on the carnival’s midway, a massive crowd is gathering and Samuel’s plan is shaping up. Backstage, Claire makes one last attempt to avert disaster. She gets up on a platform and speaks to the rest of the carnival “family,” telling them that Samuel is using them and that his power is derived entirely from them. They are skeptical, including Ian, whom Samuel found and “saved” in Central Park earlier in the season. Claire reveals that Samuel killed Joseph, his own brother, because Joseph attempted to prevent exactly what Samuel was now doing. She is backed up by Edgar and H.R.G., who enter the tent as well. They are in turn backed up by Eli, who Parkman has sent from California, and he admits that it was he who shot and killed the Tattooed Lady, Lydia, at the carnival shooting several episodes ago at Samuel’s direction. Samuel attempted to pin the shooting on H.R.G., but Eli admits that he was responsible. Faced with the truth, all of the “specials” decide that they want no part of Samuel anymore. They attempt to flee Central Park to diminish his powers and prevent his murderous plot, so Samuel rushes to the stage and tries to wreak havoc before it’s too late. The grounds begins rumbling, rides begin wobbling and light poles begin falling as TV cameras roll and carnival goers look on in horror. At that moment, Hiro and Ando arrive in the park and Claire and H.R.G. see an opening. They ask Hiro to teleport all of the specials away to sap Samuel’s power, but Hiro worries there are too many for him to take. Thankfully, Ando’s ability to super-power things comes in handy and after everyone joins hands and Ando powers up Hiro’s own power, the entire mass of people vanishes from the park in the blink of an eye. Samuel’s powers are gone and he doesn’t know how or why. He is then confronted by Peter, who tackles him and in the process, takes on Samuel’s power. The two men then do battle with some serious earth-moving involved, but the battle ends up in a fist fight that Peter wins by going George Foreman on Samuel’s face. Defeated and powerless, Samuel drops to his knees in the middle of the carnival. As “Volume 5” (confusing because it’s still the fourth season of the show) ends, Samuel is taken intp custody by “an old version” of the shadowy Company that has existed throughout the series, having been called to the scene by Lauren. She then goes in front of the TV cameras, explaining that the entire mess in the park was caused by a gas line rupture. Having talked about the place of specials in the world with her dad and longing for world in which they could not have to hide, Claire gets an idea. After she and H.R.G. are asked about what they saw and reply with “No comment,” Claire changes her mind and tells the media to keep their cameras on her. She then climbs the ginormous Ferris wheel and stands atop it as heroes (Peter, Sylar, Hiro, Ando, Edgar, etc.) look on. Lauren asks H.R.G. what Claire is doing and he forlornly replies, “Breaking my heart.” Then, replicating the leaps from water towers she did regularly in the show’s first season to test her abilities, Claire throws herself off the Ferris wheel and lands with a thud as onlookers gasp in horror. She scrapes herself up off the ground, puts her broken, mangled arm and shoulder back in place and looks right into the camera. “I’m Claire Bennet, and this is attempt…..well, I’ve kinda lost count,” she tells everyone. The title of “Volume Six” is “Brave New World,” and assuming the series makes it to a fifth season, that will apparently be the theme. Hopefully the fifth season will be a lot better than the fourth one…………

- So what has Pluto been up to since having its status as one of our solar system’s nine planets ripped from its (theoretical) hands? Well, thanks to the good folks at NASA, Pluto is staying in the outer-space spotlight and being painted as much more than a ginormous ball of ice and rock not good enough to be called a planet. The space agency has released photos of Pluto taken in the early 2000s by the Hubble Space Telescope, calling the images the "most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet." NASA admitted that the pictures won't be enough to have Pluto’s status as a planet restored, but that isn’t dampening the space dorks’ enthusiasm. "The Hubble pictures confirm Pluto is a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes not simply a ball of ice and rock," NASA said in a news release. The timing of the release is meant to coincide with Pluto’s beginning of a new phase of its 248-year orbit around the sun. NASA claims that Pluto is unlike the Earth, where the planet's tilt alone drives seasons. Because of its elliptical orbit, Pluto’s seasons are asymmetric, meaning spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere because Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the sun. The photos also show new colors and aspects of Pluto’s geography, including: reddish, yellowish, grayish surface coloration and a mysterious bright spot that is puzzling to scientists. Scientists attribute some of those new colors to ultraviolet radiation from the sun interacting with methane in the atmosphere of the dwarf planet. As for the bright spot near Pluto’s equator, it has been found to be unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost. For those of you who don’t follow planetary news closely, Pluto lost its status as our solar system's ninth planet in 2006 when an international group of tools, er, um, scientists, decided that it was too small and too distant to be considered a member of the Earth's solar-system family. I wonder if any of those scientists are kicking themselves now in light of these great revelations about our former ninth planet…………

- Finally, Florida State has accepted its fate and stopped trying to salvage wins it obtained using athletes who were also academic cheaters. After fighting and scrapping to hold onto wins from multiple sports, especially 12 wins belonging for former head football coach Bobby Bowden, FSU is putting its legal guns down, stepping away from the brawl and resigning itself to the penalties the NCAA has been seeking to inflict upon it. Florida State will vacate athletic victories from 2006 and 2007, including those 12 victories credited to Bowden, as part of its penalty for an academic fraud scandal in 2006-07 involving 61 student-athletes. The NCAA denied Florida State’s appeal of the sanctions and now 10 of its teams will suffer the consequences they should have already felt by now. When five dozen of your student-athletes cheat in an online music course, you should have to pay a steep price. But amidst all of the penalties, the vacation of wins was the only one the school chose to appeal. The football team vacated five wins from the 2006 season, including the Emerald Bowl at the end of that season, and seven wins from 2007. That means Bowden did not end his career with 389 wins, but rather 377. Either way, he would have ended up well behind counterpart Joe Paterno, the Penn State head coach who is closing in on 400 wins and unlike Bowden at the end of his career, is still an effective head coach. In addition to giving up those 12 football wins, FSU will also lose: its 2007 NCAA Division I championship in men's track and field; NCAA tournament victories in women's basketball and baseball; 22 men's basketball wins from 2006-07; 16 women's basketball wins in 2006-07 and six more from 2007-08; 32 softball wins from 2006-07; 4 baseball wins from 2006-07 and wins or meet placings in men's and women's cross country, men's and women's track and field, men's and women's swimming and diving and men's golf teams. What’s funny is that under the penalty it imposed, the NCAA allowed Florida State to determine which wins were to be vacated. How very noble of you to finally own up to your responsibilities, FSU. Nothing says stand-up institution like appealing every step of the way even though everyone knew you were 100 percent guilty of what you were accused of…………

- God help us all. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she would consider a run for president in 2012 if the situation was right for her family and the nation. Let me clue you in, S.P: never, ever, ever will this situation be right for a clueless, empty-headed, moronic tool like you to lead it. As long as we still have even one person who walks upright, hasn’t had a lobotomy and can spell their own name, then we are better off with them than you as our president. Palin made her announcement in an interview recorded Saturday and broadcast on "FOX News Sunday." She said she would run "if I believed that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family. I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country. I won't close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future." Then allow me to close the door, you moose-hunting, IQ-starved ass hat. You are clueless, you are vapid, you are quite possibly the dumbest person ever to run for elected office and the only place you would be qualified to be elected leader is Antarctica and I have a feeling that even the wildlife there would have a problem with you being in charge. This ill-advised interview was recorded before her keynote address Saturday night at what was billed the first national Tea Party convention. Anyone who paid more than $500 per ticket to attend the convention and receive a single dinner followed by a speech by Palin is nearly as stupid as she is. Yet she has deluded herself into thinking that Obama is destined to fail in a 2012 re-election bid. "That's what a lot of Americans are telling him today, and he's not listening. "Instead, he's telling everybody else, 'Listen up and I'll tell you the way it is.' Well, we have a representative form of government in our democracy. And we want him and we want Congress to listen to what the things are that we are saying," she declared in her Tool Party, er, um, Tea Party speech. And to think that I used to believe that people who went to Nashville and stayed at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center to be at the epicenter of the country music world were wasting their time and money……wow. But actually, this announcement of a possible Palin presidential bid is virtually irrelevant because after her act in 2008 campaign, no one is going to pick Palin as first female president, almost makes Hank Clinton look like a solid alternative by comparison……almost. Hank still scares the crap out of me, but for an entirely different reason – because that dude is freaking militant and intense. Palin scares me because she’s just so clueless and she doesn’t know it. Just promise me we’ll all band together to keep her as far away from the Oval Office as possible, America…………….