For many people, Mr Bush has always been an insubstantial figure.
Chipper yet irritating, like a pet squirrel, he was always the most insubstantial figure in the saga, played by the most callow of the actors.
For many Afghans, as a result, Mr. Karzai has become an insubstantial figure, clearer for what he stands for than for who he is or what he has done.
He is not an insubstantial figure, coming as he does from an old liberal family, and with a long relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi, both directly and through his wife Daw Su Su Lwin, an NLD MP.
Not an insubstantial number is my guess.
So how, one wonders, does the man who brought the first major Picasso retrospective to the United States now seem so insubstantial a figure when compared with his contemporary at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Alfred Barr (who was a great admirer of Austin)?
The black-and-white and shades of gray in many of the photographs are weak and watery, and the figures insubstantial, leading everyone who sees them to think, They already look like ghosts.
Hughes's figures, insubstantial as they are, tend to support the theory that the higher the level, the less effective direct football is (very briefly, if you separate goals scored in internationals in his sample, 63% resulted from moves of five passes or fewer, as opposed to an overall figure of 87%).
The cost of assurance by Hong Kong government is however, high - with early summer closure of all primary schools and kindergarten and a number of secondary schools, 10 billion Hong Kong dollars being spent (1.2 billion US$) to purchase H1N1 vaccines and reorganization of the health services to accommodate escalating infection figures are not insubstantial.
Just as the executioner's knife is about to be driven into the condemned man's heart, a mysterious figure appears at a window in the top storey of a house at the edge of the quarry: "The casement window flew open like a light flashing on; a human figure, faint and insubstantial at that distance and height, forced itself far out and stretched its arms out even further.
