North of Addis Ababa we took a hard, dusty mountain road to the ancient holy city of Lalibela and marvelled at the monolithic cave churches hewn from bare rock.
"The whole 'spare the rod, spoil the child' [mentality] is very monolithic".
And is the future a group of disparate networks working on common standards rather than the big systems we associate with a more monolithic national health service?
Windows users might hate iTunes (and don't we know it) but it's monolithic for a reason.
But when I contact Stemple by email, she describes a "constant drum beat that women are the rape victims" and a milieu in which men are treated as a "monolithic perpetrator class".
Past shows have featured the monolithic concrete and glass sculptures by Cristian Andersen; stop-motion nightmares from Cristóbal León; and installation, video and photographs from Katrina Daschner such as the sexually charged Murderess series featuring hooded, axe-wielding women in bleak, wintry forests.
The appeal of this approach is that it offers a way of fighting for equality in a less monolithic state sector.
Beyond the electoral mathematics of Glasgow's supposedly monolithic Labour majorities is a deeper question: how did the city of Red Clydeside, Jimmy Reid and the anti-poll tax protests – a Labour heartland for a century, which voted by 54.5% to support independence in last September's independence referendum – lose faith with the party?
Now some history that may please you less: it was Australia's 12th – and probably its most avowedly Anglophile and monarchist – PM, Sir Robert Menzies, who sidelined the monolithic monument from its pride of place in front of Old Parliament House because it was an eyesore.
For the Official Charts Company, the struggle moving forward will be to stay on top not just of shifting consumption patterns, but also the business decisions made by monolithic technology companies.
The one silver lining is that minorities, obviously, do not vote as a monolithic block; while only 6% of African background voted Tory, 24% of Indian background did.
