Headlines from May 10, 2012

Ode to the secretary-spy who went to Saigon, and was the first American woman killed there.
Not-comic comic: Memories of being raised by an abusive mother.
Design-based solutions for water management in India.
Green-energy excitement of the day: Power from onion waste.
Philippe Starck designs gadget that makes you instantly drunk for less than a second.
Reporter seeks out cooler version of himself to get high with and contemplate a non-bourgeois life.
Study finds self-disclosure so pleasurable, we’re willing to pay for it.
Bowling alleys are disappearing from churches—a survey and brief history.
Two dozen horses die at America’s racetracks each week, and the danger is growing.
Facial recognition software may be able to identify unknown subjects of famous paintings.
Pictures of limited-production vehicles. via
Live map of global book sales is oddly entrancing.
See also: Readers/writers pick best audio books for a road trip.
And in case you aren’t already obsessed: The Tobolowsky Files, in which actor Stephen Tobolowsky shares stories from his life.
List of top 50 Wikipedia articles as ranked by “interestingness.”
Number one on that list: The Marree Man of South Australia.
History of buttermilk, more or less.
Rush-hour car-bomb attacks kill 40 in Damascus, part of an “alarming upsurge.”
Explosions are passé in Hollywood—we have entered the era of the implosion.
Obama endorses same-sex marriage, a position he backed in 1996.
I think of all the gay kids out there who now know they have their president on their side.
The “myth” that marriage is a sacrament didn’t circulate until the 13th century.
Michele Bachmann becomes a Swiss citizen, but won’t run for office there.
The usual celebrity hijinks and the customary health warnings about ice cream bars. Non-censored stories popular in China last week.
Episode one of Typesetting TV features Austrian designer Elisabeth Kopf.
Round-up of good books with single-word titles.
Vidal Sassoon dies at 84.
Flame for the London Olympics torch relay lit in Greece.
Behind-the-scenes report of how London won the Olympics, down to Tony Blair chatting up an official in the bathroom.
Inside story from the Quidditch World Cup, in which biceps get torn off a shoulder.
Wonderful pictures of the Royal de Luxe’s gigantic marionettes.
Everything you could possibly want to know about international heralds.