The holy grail of CSS layouts has apparently been located by one Matthew Levine. Although I personally had never been searching for it, I was aware that people were. A number of potential grail candidates had apparently surfaced over time, but none have been as simple and elegant as the one found most recently.

This finding illustrates one of the main problems with CSS: columns. Placing content into columns is tough to begin with (even if we make use of illegitimate table layouts). Fortunately, CSS3 plans to add native column support. Unfortunately, support for that is still years down the road. And Microsoft is likely to never support it; they only support the "standards" for which they are sole author. Regardless, a tip of the hat to Matthew for sharing this gem with us. The world will never be the same.