Perhaps most worrisome, more than five years after the American invasion, which knocked Mr. Hussein from power but set off great chaos, Iraq still lacks the formal rules to divide the power and spoils of an oil-rich nation among ethnic, religious and tribal groups and unite them under one stable idea of Iraq.
In contrast, boys demonstrated more stable ideas regardless of which version they were shown, and in the regression analysis, pack version had no significant influence on the user characteristic score for boys.
Sumerian is a stable way to bootstrap ideas and start conversations.
The idea of a stable constitutional regime that reflects the tenor of modern political thought (and practice) is nowhere to be seen in Machiavelli's conception of princely government.
None of the residents had a simple past, a stable present, or a solid idea of what the immediate or long-term future might bring.
The idea of a stable of male supermodels equivalent to Naomi, Kate, Claudia and Christy seems remote, sure, but men's fashion is on the up.
Dr. Michel Bozon, a sociologist at the Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques in Paris, who studies sexuality, said the idea of a stable monogamous relationship between two people who were not living together was more established in France than in the United States.
For many people, the idea of a stable career path with one employer is going out of the window; life is a series of internships and short-term contracts.
For generations, one of the key threads of American history, especially for environmentalists, was the idea of a stable state -- that nature was in equilibrium before Europeans came, and was then thrown out of balance by exploitative newcomers who didn't know how to live in harmony with the land.
The idea of a stable, gold-linked currency is as bewildering today as it was when Locke pitched it in the 1690s.
Whatever the failings of the Maliki government, the idea that a stable federal system could develop in these circumstances has always been far-fetched.
