Primeval laws...

Herbert Spencer in his famous paper "The principles of biology" in 1864, says, "This survival of the fittest... is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life'." I have very often envisaged the possibility of this law perpetuating into our daily lives and its possible outcomes. Not a very comforting thought, is it ? The more I contemplated on this, the more apparent were the foot-prints of it's carnage. Extinction has been on a steady proliferation leaving its evident impact on our already cacophonous existence.

There has been umpteen opinions on the theory of evolution, but all concur the fact that the struggle for life is an instinctive action of all living things. The better
entity, not necessarily the one at the top of the food chain, survives by eliminating the inferior species. We have arguments that disdains man's will to have more, which I would deny with great indignation. It is his innate nature to strive for his progress. As John Nash once said, the best probability for success lies in the working towards the betterment of the group. Group at a macro level corresponds to humanity where as at a more granular level boils to communities. Those who think this would be a boon, think twice; for once we have achieved the best for us, the 'us' would no longer exist. Elimination would begin within the community.

If you consider my prior statement a whim, please find real examples in real world. The dinosaurs once reigned supreme on earth though through more brawn than brain. Their annihilation came about by mutual carnage, the law of the survival of the fittest. Guess they lacked the knowledge that Mr.Nash possessed. If you still fail to see the reason, 'competition' is a usage of great artifice which provides an efficient camouflage for the 'survival of fittest' (SOF) rule. When we say that today's world is competitive, what we inadvertently imply is SOF. A person vanquishes another for better education, better opportunities and better life. We forge a loser for every winner that we create.

Theories are quite frightening I would say, with great reticence though, as they expose to us the glimpses of what the future holds for us. This particular theory of SOF is no exception.. It never ceases to amaze me when I think of what would go through my mind if I am found the most powerful being after subjugating the rest of the world, "What next... ?" Well, the search goes on....

Not much to Gloat about Floats

Well, here comes another of my quick but crazy posts (technical you see :D..). I happened to spend some time yesterday trying to figure out a particular way of rendering a HTML page when I observed that some part of the text was truncated across pages when printed. That was when this post originated. After spending hours on the issue, the samaritan I am, I decided that nobody's time is worth spending on figuring out this issue. Though initially very obscure, the culprit was "Float".

I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that such an innocuous CSS element could be such a potential blockhead. Now that I had promised to keep my post really short, let me try to put this in the most straight forward terms..

Float : is a CSS property of any object (object.style.cssFloat) that can be set to "left", "right", "inherit" or "none".

Purpose : Initially created for placing text or images within a container. But this usage can even be extended to other container elements like DIV, SPAN etc..

Usages : object {
float:left
}

(DiV1) (span1 style="float:left")

(/span1)
(span2)

(/span2)

(/dv1)

Common Pitfalls:

* The most common mistake that we commit is not providing sufficient place for the element which we are floating. So if we have absolute specifics like width etc., we have to ensure that there is sufficient amount of space for the float to render. If not the browser dutifully renders it at the next line where sufficient space would be available.

* A good thing that you should always do while floating containers is to specify where the next element should render. For example in the above case, we have said what should be done with span but nothing about span2. Hence the browser would again take charge and render it as close as possible to span1, which is again a potential screw up. So having a "clear:right" would have been the ideal thing to do here.

* Contents of float element can overlap, hence all the inline entities should be placed after the floated element.

As a parting note, you might also want to specify the overflow of the container elements to prevent any visual mishaps. Float property has many peculiarities across various browsers and wouldn't be an advisable option to scatter it ruthlessly across pages. Moreover, the issues caused by floats aren't readily debugg'able. Beware guys ! stay limited with the usage of floats..

Remake rules !!

"என்ன கொடுமை சரவனன்ன்..."("What a disaster, Mr.Saravanann..") was all that I could say when we decided to watch the latest flick "Billa". Despite my earlier resolve not to venture into filmdom, I know that I have to commit this cardinal crime at least this once. Quite lamentably, it is once in ages that a tamil movie gets released in hyderabad, thanks to the remakes. Speaking of remakes, let me educate my non-tamil readers that Billa is the remake of the remake of the original, the original being the Big B's "Don". Oh yeah, it also happens that the first Billa was screen-presented by our "SuperStar" Rajinikanth.



As an all time fan, I knew what to expect from our dear "Thala" ("Head") a.k.a "Ultimate Star", as he is known to his dearest fans. There are certain things that has ever been beyond the horizon for our Thala,

* Expression
* Dialogue delivery
* Dance (There are more importnat things in acting, for Gods' sake !!)

But then there are several important traits that our Thala possesses,

* The trademark expression that never ceases to amaze us, his hardcore fans !
* The physique for donning any filmy attire
* Punch (both verbal and physical)
* Three day old stubble

Billa was a fluent portrayal of an anti-hero, with the usual glamor and grandeur that can attributed to the villains of today. The heriones were at their flashy best througout the movie. And dude ! You aren't supposed to expect expressions from the bad guys. They should be STONE COLD !! True to this fact, every character in the movie was at his/her expressionless best. Oh yeah, exceptions are that there can be comedy and song sequences at all inconceivable situations. But then they serve their purposes, they always take you by surprise :). Added to the hilarious chow was the DSP, main character in the plot being subjected to all sort of ludicrousness. Right from the hero to the comedian and a non-absolute kid have a go at the DSP. To be frank, Santhanam screen presence was the only time when the comedy was palatable.

A couple of songs flicked from the old billa were quite nicely remade much to the taste of the audience. Our thala looks ultimately fit throughout the movie. Obviously, he has literally ramp-walked umpteen kilometers in every song in the movie. The action sequences are the highlight of the movie where we have our heroine as a Ninja-girl jumping from the top of the Petronas towers :). Our thala can drive a car in such a splendid fashion that even NFS specialists would bow down in odium. The best part of the movie is the surprise element..you'll be surprised with the lack of surprises in the movie. This would be an eulogy to the old Billa as the director has not tampered with the plot maintaining its sanctity. All things said and done the movie is definitely going to be a box office burner, thanks to us, hardcore thala fans who would devotedly cheer every move made by him. This movie might not make it into the awards ceremony, heck ! who cares.. remake still rules !!

Movie Bottomline : Beware - Thala all the way !

Anger.. where art thou ?

"Don't you ever get angry ?" asked one of my close associates (accomplice ??). I gave yet another wry smile of mine in a cold fashion which would have even put off a wisecrack. The matter was dismissed thus with an utter disregard for the question.It was a couple of days later that I realised the question had struck a few strings within me. Something about the question disturbed me very much. It wasn't a serious impediment to my normal thought process, but it did lurk up occasionally causing some uneasiness within me.

When the frequency of this "gyan darshan" increased, I decided to sort it out once and for all. This seemingly simple remark had raised quite a few questions the answers to which wasn't as simple. I felt as if I had lost an emotion, an emotion which was quite frequent in the past. Now this part is very tricky, anger is definitely not one of the better human emotions that you would want to stick to. This is what happens when you lose something that you possessed for so long a time. The dicey part component is that you never know whether you should be happy or sad. Part of me was happy that I was oblivious to anger, while the other part was quite concerned whether I had lost the capacity to get angry...


The next few days were quite funny when I think of them now. I tried my level best to get angry at every possible opportunity. I hoped to surprise my friends with my "attitude", but I ended up surprised when they found my antics rather comical ! The more I tried to get angry, the more aware I was of my thoughts and the more I felt as if I were fabricating anger. It was pretty pathetic when you consider my attempts at getting angry. But there was definitely one thing that I gained out of this.. I could easily pretend anger with amazing ease. I was no longer artless...

Then one day it happened.. for a few moments my mind was under seizure, I couldn't think clearly, I was definitely in a different plane altogether. Some uneasiness hit me from the most unexpected quarters and brought along with it the emotion which I had lost. I was getting angry, but habits stay alive my dear; I could see and feel that I was getting angry. Well, it lasted for hardly a few seconds but again the impacts stayed long enough. For some strange reason, happiness was what I felt after that. I had not lost the capability to get angry ! Well, the next question wasn't far out there.. Does a man require negative emotions to make him complete ? Well, the search goes on.

The Godfather

This is going to be a unique post, quite different from any of my earlier ones. For once this is dedicated to one of my non-regular readers, who surprised me with the fact that he hasn't come across this masterpiece. It's come as a surprise even to me, a lazy bone like mine, undergoing all the trouble to draft a post at the most innocuous of times. This is going to be a combo review, a book -movie combo that I chanced upon to read-view within the span of the past week. I am pretty sure that each of my readers must have either read the book or watched the movie "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo. I happened to read it for the third time a couple of weeks ago when the inspiration to watch the movie was aroused within me. For the book lovers, nothing can equal the vivid description provided in the book. The smell of print and paper provides the icing for the wonderful delicacy wrought by the author.

Thankfully,for once, the movie provides ample justice to the book by taking into account the most innate details depicted in the book. For those who haven't watched the movie, please do so. Believe me, it is definitely worth it ! Marlon Brando and Al Pacino are simply amazing in their roles as Don Vito Corleone and Michael Corleone. Though the movie had some variation from the book, it recapitulates the charm of the story with its screenplay and music scores.Some of the differences that I could notice were;

* The history of Don Vito Corleone is not shown in the movie.
* Johnny Fontane isn't a very prominent character in the movie.
* The character of Dr.Jules is not even mentioned in the movie.
* The plot in the movie ends with the murder of the heads of the five families whereas the book is more benevolent, killing just the Tattaglia and Barzini.

The movie does score over the book in certain areas; the pace is quite pleasant in the movie whereas the book seems to be a bit too descriptive in certain places like Michael's stay in Corleone. The movie shows the cold-blooded politeness of the underworld in a scintillating fashion which seems extremely realistic. The music scores are so wonderful that it makes an impact on you without diverting the attention from the screenplay. Brando's presence is the magical mix that makes the movie a marvel. The scene where he says "Look, how they have massacared my boy!" to the undertaker Bonasera is one of the masterpiece of acting that has ever come up on the silver screen. The dialogues spoken in Italian have actually added the realistic flavor to the movie, despite this being not being a bi-lingual flick. No wonder the movie has been rated, the third best movie of the century ! Irrespective of the cause, the result is the same..Be it the movie or the book, both issue out an offer which you can't refuse !!