Now President Obama has signaled that new direction -- what I'm calling Flexible plus, containing much of the steps called for in the Augustine report.
The 49ers, of course, were not much of a step down.
It was the noisiest sector of the news media that did much of the stepping.
It may not sound like much of a step up, but it is.
Quenneville missed four games because of a bleeding ulcer, not that the Blackhawks missed much of a step without him in winning three of those.
It's not much of a step, for example, from the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra to the mysterious sounds of Mulatu Astatke, or from the primal free jazz saxophone of Albert Ayler to the visceral warrior wails of Getatchew Mekurya.
He has forwards to return from injury but his major dilemmas lie behind, although the way New Zealand dealt with the running threat of Billy Vunipola highlighted how much of a step-up the tour was from the Six Nations.
A1 Rapid Productivity Growth Productivity, the amount of goods and services Americans produced in each hour of work, grew rapidly in the third quarter, suggesting that much of the step-up in economic efficiency achieved in the 1990's could continue over the long run.
Although of course Frith's tome won't be too much of a step change from his former day job, as it will be based on his diaries from his 20 years of dealing with celebrities on Smash Hits, Sky magazine and Heat.
"The long periods of silence, the static, the times when the crew and Houston can't actually hear each other, brings home how just how much of a step into the unknown this all was," Max Brockbank, a resident of London, wrote in an e-mail message.
