Set your kids on the path to Star Wars fandom early by teaching them the ABCs using Star Wars characters! This Flickr set by illustrator Michael Fleming made me smile. Link -Thanks, Bairman!

You read about fast foods of Europe and Asia and Australia, now in the third part of the series, HealthAssist takes a look at fast food from South and Central America. For example, in Panama:

Fondas are one of the most popular places to grab a meal on the go. These small kiosk-type restaurants serve their food from glass boxes heated by a light bulb. Most, if not all of the food served in fondas are fried - rice, hojaldres, pork chunks, empanadas. Fondas also serve a soup called sancocho. Sancocho is a type of chicken soup flavoured with onion and cilantro.

Link -Thanks, Karen!

A new procedure to help people with damaged corneas is showing promise in three patients so far. A team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney takes stem cells from the patient's good eye and cultures them in a contact lens. When the cells have multiplied, they place the lens over the patient's affected eye and leave it for around three weeks. During that time, the cells begin to grow into the damaged cornea and help regenerate it. In effect, it's a stem cell transplant from one eye to the other.

Researcher Dr Nick Di Girolamo said: 'The procedure is totally simple and cheap.

'Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.

'There's no suturing, there is no major operation. You don’t need any fancy equipment.'

The contact lenses used in the operation are already widely used after eye surgery.

The researchers hope the technique can be adapted for other parts of the eye, such as the retina, and even elsewhere in the body.

Link -via Digg

65-year-old Hou Guoying recently had a bullet removed that had been lodged in her face for 42 years! She was shot accidently during the Cultural Revolution in China in 1967.

The bullet apparently hit her when it ricocheted through a wall during a fight in between rival factions of Red Guards.

But doctors initially told her that her wound was only superficial, the Chongqing News reported.

Constant headaches and difficulty eating eventually led to an x-ray in 1978 that revealed the bullet.

She had refused an operation because of poor medical facilities in Chongqing at the time - resulting in three more decades of discomfort.

This year, the pain began to spread to the rest of her body, so the bullet finally came out. Hou is recovering from the surgery. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Bullet-In-Face-China-Housewife-Hou-Guoying-Has-Op-To-Remove-Bullet-Stuck-In-Her-Face-For-42-Years/Article/200905415289930?lpos=World_News_First_World_News_Article_Teaser_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_15289930_Bullet_In_Face%3A_China_Housewife_Hou_Guoying_Has_Op_To_Remove_Bullet_Stuck_In_Her_Face_For_42_Years -via Arbroath

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is doing something special during the band's final tour. By offering special concert packages and encouraging donations, they have raised over $850,000 to help Eric De La Cruz get heart transplant.

De La Cruz was turned down from transplant lists because of the lack of transplant centers in Nevada. Reznor became aware of his situation after De La Cruz's sister, former CNN.com news anchor Veronica De La Cruz, began a fundraising campaign on her website. The campaign is as much to raise money for Eric as it is to raise awareness of Nevada's limited transplant opportunities, and to petition Senator Harry Reid and other Congress members for improved legislation.

Link to story. http://store.nin.com/helperic/ to donation information. -via reddit

(YouTube link)
They play better with their feet than I do with ten fingers and a score! The song is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, by J.S. Bach. -via Arbroath

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss tests your knowledge of zombie movies, specifically those that end with ...of the Dead or ...of the Living Dead. You'll see two movie titles; you decide which one was a real movie. I scored about as well as you'd expect by random guesses, because I have no clue. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25913

This shower head has 96 programmable LEDs of various colors to provide a surreal shower-in-the-dark experience. Sounds pretty cool until you realize that this experience will cost you over four grand US. £2,799.00, to be exact. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

The first draft of Star Wars was pretty awful. Mystery Man on Film takes a closer look at the 1974 version in which the young hero is Annikin Starkiller, Luke Skywalker is an elderly general, and Darth Vader is a minor character.

LEIA
Will we make it? Is there any hope? Stay with me... I love you.

Starkiller is slightly shocked at this outburst. The princess starts to cry and clings to him for support.

STARKILLER
No-one is going to die...so stop acting like a child, and start behaving like a queen. What is this silly talk of love? You belong to the people of Aquilae, and my job is to return you to them, nothing more. Now straighten up and get into a lifepod.

She's deeply hurt by his callousness. She breaks away from him and runs down a hallway into a lifepod. He is tired, and angry at the whole incident.

It makes you wonder what difference it would have made if George Lucas had rewritten the prequels a couple more times. Link -via Metafilter

Xenon {wiki} is the heaviest non-radioactive noble gas. It affects your voice like sulphur hexafluoride (previously at Neatorama) and can get you high like nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Don't try this at home; just watch these guys breathe it. Link (embedded YouTube clip)

The musical South Pacific was a Broadway hit and then a blockbuster movie. Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental floss will show how much you know about this classic. I was surprised to score 82%, because it's been a long time since I've seen it. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25878

Despite being incarcerated at a federal prison in Kentucky, Jonathan Lee Riches has made it into the Guiness Book of World Records. He was named as the person who has filed the most lawsuit ever. So what did he do next? He filed a lawsuit against the folks at Guinness!

In the injunction filed in Richland, Riches – who acknowledges he is receiving treatment for mental-health problems – said: “The Guinness Book of World Records have no right to publish my work, my legal masterpieces.”

Those include lawsuits against New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, former President George W. Bush, Somali pirates, Britney Spears and Martha Stewart, according to a Wikipedia page dedicated to Riches’ litigious exploits.

He’s also filed lawsuits against Plato, Nostradamus, James Hoffa, “Various Buddhist Monks,” the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower and Three Mile Island.

In his latest court filing, Riches wrote about how he sued Black History Month, the president of Iran and butter substitute I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!

Link -via Arbroath

If you are one who is willing to suffer for fashion, you might have a pair or two of the stylish "skinny jeans". If so, you need to know about meralgia paresthetica, or “tingling thigh syndrome.” It feels as if your legs have gone to sleep, or it may cause a burning or tingling sensation. The syndrome is caused by pressure on the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve.

“The nerve, in some people, is susceptible to compression,” says Dr. John England, a New Orleans neurologist and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. The femoral cutaneous nerve, he explains, runs from the outside of the pelvis and through the thigh. “It is a pure sensory nerve — it doesn’t go to muscles or provide strength. Anything that is tight around there could potentially compress the nerve that goes there.”

The situation is exacerbated if you are also wearing high heels. It's almost always a temporary condition. Just remove the jeans and the nerve will regenerate. Link -via Buzzfeed

(YouTube link)
This little guy looks like a cartoon character! He's a Pygmy Jerboa {wiki}, of which there are several species native to Asia. -via Arbroath

Scientists have announced the top ten new species first described in 2008.

On the list are a pea-sized seahorse, caffeine-free coffee and bacteria that live in hairspray. The top 10 new species also include the very tiny (a snake just a slither longer than 4 inches or 104 millimeters), the very long (an insect from Malaysia with an overall length of 22.3 inches or 56.7 centimeters) the very old (a fossilized specimen of the oldest known live-bearing vertebrate) and the very twisted (a snail whose shell twists around four axes). Rounding out this year's list are a palm that flowers itself to death, a ghost slug from Wales and a deep blue damselfish.

Shown is Opisthostoma vermiculum, a tiny land snail that curls on four different axes. Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: Reuben Clements)