Links for (the evening of) December 22

Klein bottle...opener (via smithsonianmag.com)

Remedia, a history of medicine blog out of Harvard, has continued its "Spaces" series (previously featured here) with two more great posts: Simon Jenkins on sex and contagion in Cardiff's docklands and Stef Eastoe on the social geography of the asylum.

The holidays are here! Not quite done your shopping yet? That's ok, you still have time to read about the science of gift-giving here. And if you still need some ideas, check out the best gifts for science nerds for 2014.

The Journal of Visual Culture has devoted this month's issue to internet memes.

 

Ever wondered what's in your water supply? Nautilus has a story about the various pharmaceutical traces found in waterways across the US. ("Pharmaceutical soup" is how one scientist describes the situation.)

 

Christian Caryl doesn't think much of The Imitation Game. The film's determination to"suggest maximum dramatic tension between their tragic outsider and a blinkered society," he writes,"not only fatally miscasts Turing as a character—it also completely destroys any coherent telling of what he and his colleagues were trying to do."

 

"The Programming Historian is an online, open access, peer reviewed suite of about 30 tutorials that help humanists (though slanted towards historians) learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate their research."

 

And the end of single-payer in Vermont.