The Stones' idea — to inhabit the modes and gestures of black American music — was a smaller idea attractively enacted.
It begins by summarizing the accomplishments of the preceding seismological observations, which provided the stepping-stone ideas on how to construct the first strong motion accelerograph.
While it's okay to be slightly quirky, remember that readers have fairly set-in-stone ideas of the usual direction of recipe books, which tends to be savory to sweet, starters to mains to dessert, and so forth, depending on what food selections you're bringing together.
It was, in short, Stone's idea of entertainment.
Bob Buster, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, initially called Mr. Stone's idea a "crazy distraction".
Indeed, Stone's idea of real barbarity is the newfangled electric chair, which singes the flesh, shoots flames out the ears, and loosens the bowels to create "an indescribable stench".
But maybe Devoto and Stone's idea of a happy ending is, like Captain Beefheart's, a peaceful and private old age, and it's pure selfishness that makes me want to drag them back on to the stage.
In filming Mr. Ch z, Mr. Stone said, the idea was "to get face time, which we don't get here without the filters".
It's a remarkable story for any band to live up to, but then Stone's new idea sounds pretty remarkable too.
But this morning Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury and probably Nick Clegg's closest ally at the top of the party, killed the idea stone dead.
