To implement even a modest revision of collective self-defence has been a struggle.
It is hard to say whose opera this is; it is perhaps collective: modest parts exceeded by their sum.
He has arrived at Playland via bands including the Pretenders, the The, a partnership with New Order's Bernard Sumner called Electronic, the American indie-rock collective Modest Mouse, and the rough and ready British trio the Cribs.
Thus, while the existence of common variants affecting the risk of ASD is almost assured, their individual effects are modest and their collective effects could be smaller than that for rare variation.
Then there are the owners who are willing to tolerate more modest modifications to the collective bargaining agreement.
The rest of us, the other three-fourths of our collective and modest investment, foresaw floating cocktail therapy and languid lunch trips to nearby towns.
In that sense, recognition of the uselessness of individual action is the very reason for making our modest contribution to the collective effort.
Compared to conventional foresight, Adaptive Foresight thus favours a more modest interpretation of the collective ability to "shape the future" and stresses the need to adapt to actions by others.
This has recently been proved by started-from-scratch ventures as modest as Orchard, a Lower East Side collective-as-art-gallery, and Pocket Utopia, an alternative space of nearly two years' duration that the artist Austin Thomas oversaw in a Bushwick, Brooklyn, storefront until this spring.
But a recovery shortened the group's collective memory, and while modest progress has been made, one would have to dig far into the fine print to find that discussion on this year's agenda.
