The Snapshot exhibition, on at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until early January, examines the influence that early photography had on the work of artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Unhampered by hefty equipment (the Kodak was held at waist level and had an arrow marked on top to help point the lens) or long exposures, Bonnard and his fellow painters from the Nabi group, Edouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton, were among the first artists to use the camera to observe fine details, perspectives and light effects too fleeting to see with the naked eye. A painstakingly curated new show juxtaposes 220 mostly unpublished vintage snapshots by seven fin-de-siècle artists along with their paintings, prints and drawings in an effort to demonstrate how this new way of seeing inspired and expanded the painters’ creative vision.

A chess board, with a circular design, allowing three people to play at the same time, could prove indefinitely more challenging than the two player format… for instance can you maintain offensives on two fronts? Could you fend off the dual attacks of a possible alliance between the other two players?

Deceptively mind boggling?

Three billion years ago disparate micro-organisms, struggling to survive, formed a mega-organism, called LUCA, which was so vast that it encompassed all of Earth’s oceans.

The latest results suggest LUCA was the result of early life’s fight to survive, attempts at which turned the ocean into a global genetic swap shop for hundreds of millions of years. Cells struggling to survive on their own exchanged useful parts with each other without competition – effectively creating a global mega-organism.

When it comes to memory, forgetting certain things is just as important as remembering others, though finding an ideal balance between the two is unfortunately problematic.

The bad news is that our memories are anything but concrete and can be altered with relative ease. The good news is that imperfect memory is an evolutionary adaptation that serves our species well much of the time. Loss of memory, and creation of new memory, is central to a relatively efficient system of information processing that never sleeps. The selective movement of information into long-term memory is an adaptive marvel that allows our brains to store crucial pieces of information that we will rely on in the future, and shed information not worth holding onto.

An almost eight and a half minute long mashup of the 226 songs recorded by the Beatles, starting with their longest track “Revolution 9”. The first four minutes are ok, “Hey Jude” remains mostly discernible up until this mark, but thereafter the resulting soundscape is more akin to a very heavy rainstorm.

(Thanks Coffee Girl)

While known by a variety of names, including of course coffee as far back as the early 17th century, it still took awhile for the popular beverage to be referred to by the one name.

In its pages we find recollections about a very good drink called Chaube (1573), Caova (1580), cohoo (1609) and, surprisingly for such an early date, coffee (also 1609), cahue (1615), coho, and copha (1628). The route to Europe is supposed to be from Arabic quahwa via Turkish kahveh. Later coffee became the standard form in English. But, as we can see, there was no real progression: in 1609 some people said cohoo, while others already knew coffee. The cause may be that the Arabic and the Persian pronunciations competed, one being prevalent on the coast of Arabia, the other in the mercantile towns.

The premise

Attack the Block (trailer), a science-fiction comedy, is the debut feature of British film director Joe Cornish, and is the story of a group of teenagers living in a housing estate in Kennington, South London, who find themselves having to fend off an invasion by aliens who have inexplicably decided to attack their apartment block.

Fifteen year old Moses (John Boyega), who has far too much time on his hands, leads a gang of friends including Biggz (Simon Howard), Jerome (Leeon Jones), Dennis (Franz Drameh), and Pest (Alex Esmail), on various misdemeanours around the estate, that involve anything from mugging to drug dealing.

The play

Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a nurse living on the estate, is distraught after being robbed by Moses and his friends one night, and calls the police. During the theft an object falls from the sky, crashing into a parked car. While searching the damaged vehicle for valuables, Moses is attacked by a very odd looking animal but manages to kill it.

Thinking the creature may be of value, Moses calls on Ron (Nick Frost), an older friend, and the estate’s resident drug dealer, for help. Meanwhile more objects fall from the sky, but being Guy Fawkes Day, the night sky is filled with exploding pyrotechnics, so no one else, except only Moses and his friends, appears to notice.

The gang begins to realise something is seriously wrong after police officers, arriving to investigate Sam’s mugging, are killed by mysterious furry, savage creatures, with glowing teeth. With more people falling victim to the aliens though, Sam reluctantly befriends Moses and gang, in an effort to thwart the invasion.

They soon learn that the creature Moses initially killed was a female, and her death appears to have unleashed a mob of angry male aliens seeking retribution. With the body count mounting, and authorities oblivious to the invasion, Sam and Moses realise it is down to them to cooperate so as to stop the marauding aliens.

The wrap

“Attack the Block”, in true sci-fi style, requires audiences to overlook a number of absurdities, prime being that only Moses and cohorts seem to know an alien attack is in progress. While some films ask too much in this regard, here is a title that clearly isn’t taking itself that seriously, downplaying what otherwise might be considered glaring faults.

“Attack the Block” is filled with violence, gore, profanity, lashings of London slang, and a biting humour, and viewers will likely be in the place of Sam at the onset, seeing little to like in the contemptuous Moses and his friends, but as the story progresses the crisis at hand effects understanding, and a change for the better, among all concerned.

It probably comes as no surprise to learn that laughter in-fact serves a very serious purpose.

Hurley and his coauthors begin from the idea that our brains make sense of our daily lives via a never ending series of assumptions, based on sparse, incomplete information. All these best guesses simplify our world, give us critical insights into the minds of others, and streamline our decisions. But mistakes are inevitable, and even a small faulty assumption can open the door to bigger and costlier mistakes. Enter mirth, a little pulse of reward the brain gives itself for seeking out and correcting our mistaken assumptions. A sense of humor is the lure that keeps our brains alert for the gaps between our quick-fire assumptions and reality.

The early work of US artist and graphic designer Susan Kare, who created many of the icons and typefaces used in the early Apple computers, is explored in an article by Steve Silberman.

Kare’s first assignment was developing fonts for the Mac OS. At the time, digital typefaces were monospaced, meaning that both a narrow I and a broad M were wedged into the same bitmapped real estate – a vestigial legacy of the way that a typewriter platen advances, one space at a time. Jobs was determined to come up with something better for his sleek new machine, having been impressed by the grace of finely wrought letterforms in calligraphy classes he audited at Reed College, taught by the Trappist monk Robert Palladino, a disciple of master calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds.

Kathy Lette, writing for The Guardian, likens the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) to a rock band, so fresh and vibrant is their approach to performing classical, or chamber, music.

As soon as it takes to the stage, the band grabs you by the cultural short and curlies with its distinctly Australian flavour and flair. It’s impossible not to be captivated by its youth, energy and passion. The musicians stand so close to the edge of the stage as they sway toward the audience, it’s a wonder they don’t end up in casualty. But their irreverent rock-band style and golden good looks belie their technical precision. Sleek, lean, gleeful, exuberant, exhilarating, vigorous, warm, unaffected, streamlined, they are enough to send you into superlative overdrive.

I’m not quite sure about the rock band analogy, but I can say I’ve had to fight off the urge to start moshing at some ACO shows, so animated are their performances.