Close observers of his military say Syria is having trouble keeping its sophisticated and maintenance-intensive weapons functioning.
Whichever view you take, multicultural and tolerant or disapproving and fearful, the awkward fact is that we have not been breeding fast enough (or young enough) to keep society functioning without outside help, let alone educating ourselves to the levels a post-industrial economy is going to need.
"We started funding this last November because we were seeing a situation where the Rainbo centres were providing access to courts, but if the courts were not functioning well, we were leaving these women at a loss," says Walsh.
Only a third of the one million or so citizens have access to a functioning toilet.
Perhaps, however, the reality is that people farming is like investing in the Titanic: a good idea in theory, glossy and wonderful to look at upon completion, but doomed when it comes to reality of actually functioning effectively.
While she has missed just about every mark on the schoolwork journey, she is highly functioning in her social life.
People with other diseases and women in childbirth are at risk because hospitals are no longer functioning properly.
There are no beaches on this stretch of coast, so tourism has passed Marano by, and it remains a functioning port, with 300 of its 2,000 inhabitants still working as fishermen.
Too much meaning and an academic might just stop functioning.
In a letter to the university, seen by The Guardian, she writes: "These are practices which I'm sure you will agree are unacceptable in any workplace and which an institution such as UCL should be doing all it can to stamp out in any location that it is functioning, even if the individuals concerned are not direct employees of the college".
Over time, the name has lost its punny puckishness much as the movement has steadily shifted from a proudly anacharical – even populist – response and rebellion within the GOP to a smoothly functioning alternative to it.
