Over at the Guardian's film blog:

The French director Alain Resnais, who had presented his most recent film The Life of Riley only last month at the Berlin film festival, was part of that remarkable New Wave generation and their associates which set the movie world on fire after the war: not merely film-makers but experimentalists, dazzling theoreticians, maîtres à penser, artists whose work proffered a critique ahead of any of the reviewers and writers who crowded excitably into the cinema to see their latest movies.

His films Night and Fog (1955), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and the sensational Last Year in Marienbad (1961) made him one of the key figures in European cinema. Like many of this group, Resnais made an explosive start and carried on working into extreme old age, though perhaps his later work could not match the scintillation of that golden period of the late 50s and 60s.

He was fascinated not merely in the possibilities of cinema but in theatre and theatricality — and the theatrical dimension of reality. In fact, he was notable as a French cultural star who took an interest in something British: he frequently adapted the plays of Alan Ayckbourn, in whom he savoured a surreality of bourgeois form; he brought out the delicious Magrittean absurdity.

More here. Night and Fog, over at Hulu, for those in the US.

Ed Yong in Not Exactly Rocket Science:

In a field outside Budapest, Hungary, ten quadcopter drones are flying as a coordinated flock. They zip through the great outdoors, fly in formation, or even follow a leader.

The little machines are the work of Hungarian scientists led by physicist Tamas Vicsek from Eotvos University in Budapest. They’re autonomous, meaning that they compute their flight plans on their own, without any central control. They can follow instructions, but they work out their own paths using GPS signals to navigate and radio signals to talk to one another. They’re the closest thing we have to an artificial flock of birds.

The copter flock is a real-life version of an influential computer programme called Boids, created by Craig Reynolds in 1986. He programmed virtual flying objects—the eponymous Boids—to move according to three simple rules. They aligned with the average heading of their neighbours; they were attracted to each other; and they also repulsedeach other to keep some personal space. These three simple rules were enough to simulate a realistic bird-like flock.

More here.

UPDATE 3/24/14: Winners announced here.

UPDATE 3/14/14: Finalists announced here.

UPDATE 3/14/14: Semifinalists announced here.

UPDATE 3/10/14: Voting round is now open. Click here to see full list of nominees and vote.

Dear Readers, Writers, Bloggers,

We are very honored and pleased to announce that Mark Blyth has agreed to be the final judge for our 4th annual prize for the best blog and online writing in the category of politics and social science. Details of the previous three politics (and other) prizes can be seen on our prize page.

Mark Blyth is professor of international political economy at Brown University. He is based in the Department of Political Science, but his research begs and borrows from multiple fields. He is particularly interested in how uncertainty and randomness impact complex systems, particularly economic systems. He was a member of the Warwick Commission on International Financial Reform that made a case for macro-prudential regulation. He is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), and most recently, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press 2013). His academic writings have appeared in such places as the American Political Science Review, the Review of International Political Economy, and the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, while his more popular writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazine. He has also written for 3 Quarks Daily.

As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open. There will then be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the editors of 3 Quarks Daily will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add up to three wildcard entries of their own choosing. The three winners will be chosen from these by Mark Blyth.

The first place award, called the “Top Quark,” will include a cash prize of 500 dollars; the second place prize, the “Strange Quark,” will include a cash prize of 200 dollars; and the third place winner will get the honor of winning the “Charm Quark,” along with a 100 dollar prize.

(Welcome to those coming here for the first time. Learn more about who we are and what we do here, and do check out the full site here. Bookmark us and come back regularly, or sign up for the RSS feed.)

Details:

The winners of this prize will be announced on March 24, 2014. Here's the schedule:

February 24, 2014:

• The nominations are opened. Please nominate your favorite blog entry by placing the URL for the blog post (the permalink) in the comments section of this post. You may also add a brief comment describing the entry and saying why you think it should win. (Do NOT nominate a whole blog, just one individual blog post.)
• Blog posts longer than 4,000 words are strongly discouraged, but we might make an exception if there is something truly extraordinary.
• Each person can only nominate one blog post.
• Entries must be in English.
• The editors of 3QD reserve the right to reject entries that we feel are not appropriate.
• The blog entry may not be more than a year old. In other words, it must have been written after February 23, 2013.
• You may also nominate your own entry from your own or a group blog (and we encourage you to).
• Guest columnists at 3 Quarks Daily are also eligible to be nominated, and may also nominate themselves if they wish.
• Nominations are limited to the first 200 entries.
• Prize money must be claimed within a month of the announcement of winners.

March 8, 2014

• The nominating process will end at 11:59 PM (NYC time) of this date.
• The public voting will be opened soon afterwards.

March 13, 2014

• Public voting ends at 11:59 PM (NYC time).

March 24, 2014

• The winners are announced.

One Final and Important Request

If you have a blog or website, please help us spread the word about our prizes by linking to this post. Otherwise, post a link on your Facebook profile, Tweet it, or just email your friends and tell them about it! I really look forward to reading some very good material, and think this should be a lot of fun for all of us.

Best of luck and thanks for your attention!

Yours,

Abbas