Some This and Some That

-- Asher Elbein at The Atlantic muses on why the company Superman built can't get a handle on Superman. Short answer, my version, is that they spend all their time tinkering with Superman (costume changes, power levels, origin, etc.) and pay little attention to Clark Kent. The old comic book saying is that the way Superman is different from Batman is that Superman is just an identity Clark Kent puts on to help people, while Bruce Wayne is an identity that Batman puts on to give him cover to fight crime. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster obviously got it in creating the hero, Christopher Reeve and the Salkinds got it in the movies, Mark Waid and Alex Ross got it in Kingdom Come, and Melissa Benoist gets it as she portrays Supergirl in her TV show. But DC Comics mostly don't get it.

-- A Star Wars fan and sci-fi journalist tracked down the actor who played the pilot who referred Obi-Wan Kenobi to Chewbacca and Han Solo. Fortunately, footage of him still existed since George Lucas sold the franchise before digitally replacing him with a Gungan.

-- Scientists are using the physics of how pancakes form -- it has to do with the speed that water escapes the batter while its being cooked -- to investigate how they can treat glaucoma. One treatment for the eye condition involves small slices in the sclera of the eye to reduce the pressure of the built-up fluid behind it. The pancake study can help model the most efficient way to do that. The downside is that scientists will now need to spend some extra time on the treadmill after eating their experiments.

-- Now, you might think that, given the number of athletes involved and the costs of an education, that the line-item for tuition, room and board for collegiate athletes would be larger than just about any other athletic cost. Well, according to CNN, you'd be a little off.