As Mr Morris observes: "…although the hard ceiling had been pushed up a little, it remained as hard as ever".
In which case, both West and East will simultaneously crash into the hard ceiling of our own era.
Envisioning a small one-bedroom in a residential Brooklyn neighborhood, he drew up a budget: "$1,400 was my soft ceiling and $1,500 was my hard ceiling," he said.
N.B.A. owners are pushing for a hard cap, similar to the N.F.L.'s, or an N.H.L.-style "flex" cap, which allows a broad payroll range but still has a hard ceiling.
Under the flex cap system, each team would have a "target" payroll of $62 million, which could be exceeded using cap exceptions until the team hits a hard ceiling, which Stern said had not been determined.
Mr. Gingrich, of course, is only trying to fill the space where Herman Cain stood just a few weeks ago, before his outsider's juggernaut ran up against the hard ceiling of political reality.
Another reason that finding versatile linebackers and safeties is vital for defensive progress is that the proliferation of shrewd presnap reads and quick passes from quarterbacks puts a hard ceiling on the impact of a pass rush.
One popular interpretation is that this 25 percent represented a hard ceiling on Mr. Romney's support — and that it was only a matter of time before some "not Romney" candidate consolidated much of the remaining 75 percent of the vote and overtook him.
He shows us how different empires were boosted by periods of "axial thought" to surge up the development ladder, only to crumble upon hitting a "hard ceiling," usually inflicted by what he calls the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse: climate change, migration, famine, epidemic and state failure.
So does this mean that for Apple displays, 3.5 inches is a hard ceiling, and 10.1 inches a hard floor?
