Will Slumdog Millionaire make it?

I chanced upon this article on the BBC website. While I have not yet seen the film, the article as well as the responses were interesting.

I did not understand the word dog in the movie title. Nor did I understood why that particular word appeared or was approved as the movie title. History has many examples. When Kapil Dev's cricket team started winning matches against the much feared teams in the Prudential World Cup in 1983, they were called Kapil's Devils. Similarly, Gavaskar and Sachin were called as Little Masters. May be I am wrong or I am reading too much into things.

Best Books of 2008

Slate picks up the best of 2008.

New York Time's 10 Best Books of 2008.

Salon's best books of 2008.

Time magazine selects Roberto Bolano's novel as the best in 2008.

Lastly, the best from the bible of literary criticism, TLS.

Types of Headlines- a bit old fashioned

The following classification of newspaper headlines is based on my journalism notes. They are from the point of page layout.

Flush Left-Headlines that are aligned to the left margin of the page.
Step-A headline of two or three lines with the top one flushed to the left and the last one to the right.
Inverted Pyramid-Headline arranged in the form of an inverted pyramid.
Hanging Indention-Headline flushed to the right of the page, except the first line.
Kicker-Headline of two parts with one line in a smaller font size and in a different type family than the others.
Overline-Headline with a smaller supporting line aligned to the middle at the top.
Underline- Kicker in reverse.
Hammer-A kicker reversely arranged.Usually a Hammer has two or three words with bigger headline at the top.
Combination-A headline that combines any of the above types.
New Pattern-Headlines that combine new patterns and artwork.

A quote from Milan Kundera

"By writing books, the individual becomes a universe. And since the principal quality of the universe is its uniquness, the existence of another universe constitutes a threat to its very existence."

The Art of Fiction

I read the The Art of Fiction by David Lodge in the early 90s. I was very much impressed by the book, which gave an insight into the world of literature. I did keep notes while reading the book and today I decided to put a list of books recommended by the author in various chapters.

The books include the following:

Defamiliarisation-Villete-Charlotte Bronte. For more on defamiliarisation, click here.
Interior Monologue-Ulysses-James Joyce
Intrusive Author-Adame Bede (George Orwell), Howard's End (E M Forster), As Good as Gold (Joseph Heller)
Suspense-A Pair of Blue Eyes (Thomas Hardy)
Skaz-The Catcher in the Rye-J D Salinger. Skaz
Epistolary Novels-Pamela and Clarissa (Samuel Richardson), Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen), The Trick of It (Michael Frayn)
Mystery Novels-Wilkie Collin's novels, Heart of Darkness(Joseph Conrad), The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) and Mrs. Bathurst (Rudyard Kipling).
Names-The author says that names are never neutral in fiction. To understand this, read How Far you can go and Nice Work by David Lodge.
The Stream of Consciousness-Phrase coined by William James, brother of Henry James. Read Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf).
Lists-Describes the purchase of luxury items by the heroines-by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Surprise-From Aristotle's "Peripetia". Read Vanity Fair by William Thackeray.
Time Shift-Slaughter House Five (Kurt Vonnegut), Time's Arrow (Martin Amis) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark).
Repetition-Novels of D H Lawrence
Fancy Prose-Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov), Eupheus: The Anatomy of Wit (by John Lyly).
Intertextuality-Ulysses
The Experimental Novel-Term coined by Emile Zola. Read novels by Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Loving (Henry Green).
Comic Novel-Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis)
Magic Realism-Nights at the Circus (Angela Carter), Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson), The Book of Laughter (Milan Kundera).
Staying on the Surface-Robinson Crusoe, The History Man (Malcom Bradbury)
Showing and Telling-Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding)
Telling in Different Voices-Female Friends (Fay Weldon). Also called "polyphony or alternatively dialogism" by Mikhail Bakhtin.
A sense of the Past- The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles).
Imagining the Future-1984 (Orwell)
Symbolism-Women in Love (D H Lawrence)
Allegory-The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan), Erewhon (Samuel Butler).
Epiphany-John Updike
Unreliable Narrative-The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
The Exotic-Novels of Graham Greene.
Surrealism-The Hearing Trumpet (Leonara Carrington)
Irony-The Old Wive's Tale (Arnold Benett)
Ideas-Novels of Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Dostovesky, Sartre.
Metafiction- Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne), John Barth, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges.
Aporia-Samuel Beckett
The Ending-Pincher Martin by William Golding
Point of View-What Massie Knew (Henry James)

Environmentalism and Lifestyle

If you believe that the IT industry is a 'clean' industry, it is time to be bitten by the reality. Read the following intro in a newspaper:

"While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g," says a Times report.To read the report, click here.

While the Americans have started to think about car-pooling and green fuel, what are we doing here? We are ashamed to take the public transport. Is not it?

"We are so used to our comfortable way of life. It is much easier for us to drive ourselves to work instead of tacking 10 minutes on to our commute by taking public transportation.

It is much easier for us to do things on our own schedule, instead of offering to carpool with friends or co-workers and maybe being slightly inconvenienced by waiting for five minutes," says an article in The Republican.

User Stories and Use Cases

In discussions, I hear the words "user stories" and 'use cases" used interchangeably. This wikipedia link details what exactly a user story is.

Wiki explains User Case.