Conference thebay::joyoflex

    There's a political club in the UK called....
    
         "Young Conservatives"

    Ah, yes; a favorite topic. (And a neat word; "oxymoron" sounds like
    a "dunce who's full of hot air".)
    
    I think .0 includes some new ones; for other notes on oxymorons,
    see 118, 149, and 249. (For new noters: DIR/TITLE="oxy" is a quick
    way to scan for existing notes.)
    
    -b

    Re .0:
    
    Many of the so-called "real" oxymorons aren't at all.
    
    For instance:
    
    "Hell's angels" is theologically valid, if one follows the argument
    that devils/demons are outcasts from Heaven when Lucifer revolted.
    Lucifer was a _rebellous angel_, and so were his allies/minions.
    Therefore, Hell's angels is correct.
    
    "Acceptable errors" is correct, certainly in information theory,
    since if the errors aren't sufficient to destroy/damage the data,
    their presence is "acceptable."  (A typo in a news story is a good
    example of this.)
    
    "Holy war," likewise is a legitiomate term _in the perspective of
    the religion it's used in reference of.  Some religions require
    people actively to fight for their faith; indeed, even in Christianity,
    the Battle of Armageddon would be a holy war.
    
    Obviously, "oxymorons" like Mary Tyler Moore aren't.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    How about "Millitary Intelligence.."

    re .4:
    
    it was listed under "quasioxymoron" since one is making a value
    judgement about the military.
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    re .4,.5  I've also seen it in probably two other notes devoted
    to this subject.

    "Humane slaughter"
    
    
    
    
    
    John M.

    How about "Tactical Nuclear weapon" and "Strategic nuclear weapon"?
    
    -- not really oxymorons, but rather like chosing a 16-gauge shotgun
       instead of a 20-gauge, for precision and accuracy...

     Management decision ?
    
    	Maybe, in some dark corners of Digital...
    

    
    The first of its kind?
    

  Negative acknowledge (ASCII 21)

  JP

    Re .10:
    
    I've seen interesting variants of that, such as --
    
                  "Authentic replica"
    
                   "genuine copy"
                                    
                  "unique duplicate"
    
    Such items are often mentioned in television advertisements,
    esopecially on the UHF stations.  Often in connection with jewelery
    or collectables.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    "highly unique"
    
    
    John m.

    Did I mention that one?  My lawyer says it's an official term!
    

The plural of oxymoron is oxymora.

Stephen

    Don't say it... I know you're being baited, but don't say it.

Re: .17
	Wicked good, of course.
					>>>==>PStJTT

    
                               PRAVDA
    

Does this qualify?

            <<< LANDO::WRKD$:[NOTES$LIBRARY]CLASSIFIED_ADS.NOTE;5 >>>
                            -< CLASSIFIED_ADS.NOTE >-
================================================================================
Note 7344.0                 western saddle for sale.                  No replies
AQUA::CONWAY                                          6 lines  24-APR-1987 17:38
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


For sale: 16 1/2 inch western pleasure saddle
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	  White buck stitched, excellent condition (read old).

	  $150.00 /b.o.  May be seen @MRO or in lancaster.

    Can't believe it, but I couldn't find these in any of the oxymoron
    topics:
    
    			Digital logic
    
    
    and another classic, this one from the Vietnam war:
    
    	   "We destroyed the village in order to save it"
    
    
    Clay Satow

  And how could we have forgotten:

    Creation Science

  JP

    How could we have forgiven it?
    							Ann B.

    ... for they know not whence they evolve.

    Howdy,
    
    Since I posted the base note for this topic, I've moved, married,
    changed jobs, sold a house and bought a house and even succeeded in
    registering in the DECWORLD 87 registration system.  In light of that
    experience (and all the other DW87 experiences taking place the next
    two weeks), I offer a new oxymoron for consideration .... 
    
    	DECWORLD PLANNING!                ;'}
    
    Steve
    
    PS - don't flame TOO much - there IS a smile there, painful though
    it is!
    
    

Re: < Note 327.26 >
                           -< penultimate oxymoron? >-

    Justice Bork

    Re: .29
    
    As suggested in .4 that might be placed in the category of
    quasioxymoron since it reflects personal opinion.

    Quasioxymoron -- love it!  Run it through the Humpty-Dumpty
    Portmanteau Maker (a marvelous device that compresses two words
    into one) and you get:
    
    
    
    			Quasimoron 
                           
    					andrew  
    

Oops, wrong note!

I'm not a real hunchback ....


I'm only a Quasi-modo.

				Nigel

    Have you read Tom Clancy's latest book, "Patriot Games"?
    
    It the continuation of an earlier story as the "Hunchback of Notre
    Dame" goes on to play for the pros.

    Hump? What hump?
    
    (Oops! I thought this was the MOVIES conference.)
    
    --- jerry

    Having moved to Dallas just under a year ago, I offer the following
    oxymoron:
    
    Texas gardening

    In a TV ad for a newspaper:
    
    
    
    unbiased editorial
    

The Time magazine article about Voyager's trip past the planet
Neptune said it showed something that may be "an ancient
'ice volcano' that once spewed frozen gases."

Did I miss something in grade school physics, or aren't all solids
"frozen gases" (and vice versa)?

You missed something ....
    
    Look at your VDT ... what's the screen made of ?
    
    Glass, right ?
    
    Glass is a solid, right ?   WRONG.
    
    Glass is a supercooled liquid.  It still maintains the properties
    of a liquid.  It is brittle like a solid, but glass flows like a
    liquid.  If you look at say 1/8" glass (typical window glass) and
    measure it at the top and at the bottom when new in a window you'd
    find both top and bottom were both 1/8".  But come back again after
    a few years and you'd find it thicker at the bottom.  It flowed.
    It's also why glass even from say the 60's appears to have lots
    of imperfections in it.

    It's also how glaciers flow ... they may be ice, but they aren't
    solid.
    
    Wouldn't that rot the socks off you grade school science teacher?
    Now, they'd just say, well we had to teach it in a simplified manner.
    Just like they taught us about centrifugal force which pulls outward
    when you spin a ball on a string.  Centrifugal force doesn't exist
    in our frame of reference.  The force on the ball is inwards, holding
    the ball on the string and is called centripedal force.  Try convincing
    your science teacher of that one!
    
    Stuart

    .-1 is misleading.  Saying that a substance is not a solid
    because with sufficient manipulations you can make it change
    shape sounds like cheating at the definition.  For example
    if one takes a pure silica glass sheet into a low gravity
    environment so that it does not flow, does that now make it
    a proper solid?  If one adds the right chemicals to the glass
    so that it doesn't flow (as most modern window glass are made)
    is it now a solid?  What if the glass still does undergo
    deformation under a very strong gravitational field or just
    takes much longer.
    
    A better operational definition is something like "X is a solid
    at temperature Y and pressure Z if it does not change shape
    to that of an arbitrary container".
    
    There's an intriguing experiment that has been in progress for
    over 40 years involving a chunk of tar.  A now-dead researcher
    wanted to see how fast this very viscous tar would flow under
    ambient conditions.  The result is that it does drip but verrrrrry
    slowly.  Years elapse between drips.  Contests are held to guess
    when the stupid thing will drip.  I'd argue that this is a solid
    even though it does flow.

    	I think the scientifically accepted definitions tend to be along
    the lines of the type of molecular bonding, rather than taking a quick
    look at the thing.
    
    	Glass and sapphire have much the same chemical components, but are
    classed differently, since sapphire has a crystalline molecular
    structure, and does not flow, though it can be deformed. Glass does not
    have the crystalline bonding, though like many liquids it *can*
    crystalize - this appears as your window shattering for no apparent
    reason.
    
    	There are similar distinctions between very heavy gasses that you
    can pour from one container to another and real liquids.

    See today's New York Times Science section (5 September) for a
    discussion of quasicrystals.  The article says that "[a]ccording to
    classical theory, which until 1984 had remained unchallenged for
    nearly two centuries, all solids were believed to consist of either
    crystals or glass."

(.41)
    
>     					      A now-dead researcher
>    wanted to see how fast this very viscous tar would flow under
>    ambient conditions.  

That'll teach him!

Stephen

    Modern glass doesn't flow ?  Since when ?
    
    A popular sliding window design has two panes of glass that lap,
    such that when closed, the panes touch top to bottom and form a
    seal.  These are often plain window glass, but sometimes toughened
    (tempered) glass too.  To test them, you put a piece of paper between
    the two lapping panes, in the middle, close the window and withdraw
    the paper.  When the window is new, the paper is difficult to remove,
    but after just a few years, you can easily withdraw the paper. 
    With older windows, after 10 years, the paper isn't held at all.
    
    These make a pretty rotten window for a cold climate after a while!

    Stuart

    I suppose this isn't quite an oxymoron, but I don't kno what else
    it is.
    
    I have seen ads recently for "kitchen furniture", "living room
    furniture", and "occasional furniture".  What does "occasional
    furniture" become the rest of the time?
    
    -Jody
    

    re: .46
    
    The occasional chair and the occasional table are really the same
    piece of furniture.  It looks solid, but one flows into the other.
    
    --bonnie

    I have been know to sit on a block of cement in a pinch.  Does this
    make it an occasional sofa so that you can charge $175 for a block
    of cement?
    
    Robbie

    I think you might have discovered a new business for yourself,
    Robbie . . . 
    
    --bonnie

Thanks to everyone who helped to disillusion me and shake my
faith in elementary school science teachers.  However, the
original question remains:  What are the features (functionalities? :-) )
of FROZEN GASSES?

    When they fall on your driveway, they're easier to shovel than ice
    is????
    
    --bonnie

    re: .50 
    
    > What are the features (functionalities? :-) ) of FROZEN GASSES?
    
    Frozen carbon dioxide ("dry ice") is pretty darn cold!!!

>< Note 327.50 by TAV02::SID >
>			What are the features (functionalities? :-) )
>of FROZEN GASSES?



	Why, Eskimos can throw them out of the igloo before they melt!

8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)8-)

Back to the original topic, I was reminded of another oxymoron from the Viet 
Nam era.  It had to do with the case of a soldier who was killed when an 
artillery crew aimed their cannon improperly and shot a shell that landed in 
one of their own positions.  The result concluded that the soldier was killed 
by "friendly fire" from a "non-hostile artillery attack".

I doubt that the soldier thought the shrapnel was "non-hostile" and I'm sure 
he didn't consider it "friendly".

Clay

    Relic from the Vietnam War
    
    
    "Kill for Peace"

From a rural area being inundated by out-of-state real estate developers:


"Another Quality Subdivision"

       

(No mention, however, of whether the quality is high- or low-......)

    Re .51
    
    (re frozen gases)
    
    > When they fall on your driveway, they're easier to shovel than ice
    > is????
    
    But ice IS a frozen gas.  Remember how it got up into that cloud
    in the first place.
    
    
    Re .0 and a few others, varying degrees of partial uniqueness
    
    If there's two of them, they're dique?
    Three of them, trique
    Four, quarq
    Five, quique
    Six, sique
    
    Ten, deque
    
    If there's none at all, zonque
    
    
    For whichever topic concerns words which are their own antonyms
    (e.g. cleave, ravel), I don't remember if anyone mentioned the word
    "impregnable."  But in this topic, someone commented on partial
    pregnacies.  Surely a partial pregnancy is just somewhere in the
    range between impregnable and impregnable.
    
    
    Actually, I thought an oxymoron was someone who added a new note
    on the topic without checking for old ones.

    	Heard last night on Public Radio:
    
    	"...the president was extensively briefed."
    
    	-- Glinch

From an ad in another notesfile:

    Avocado electric stove. Works fine and looks good.
    ^^^^^^^				   ^^^^^^^^^^

	Seen in another notesfile ...

>>	4.  When violence seems imminent in a Threat 
>>	    of Violence situation, Security will ...

	I know it's not an oxymoron, but I just _had_ to 
	share it.  What is the generic name for such a 
	thing anyway?  It's on the tip of my tongue.
	A redundancy?  Oh, sorry.

	Jim.

    It's a Vogonball, and it needs to be e-mailed to VORTEX::CALIPH::BINDER
    for inclusion in the Vogon News Service occasional listing of Vogonballs.
    
    [Yes, please send it to him.]
    
    -- Norman Diamond

	Norman,  I did as you requested.

	Jim

	PS  I still need to know the _real_ name for such a thing.

A pleonasm is not the same as a tautology, though most people (the 
lumpenproletariat?) lump them together nowadays. Don't ask me the
difference, I just recognize it; a dictionary _might_ be able to define
it in a way that would pass muster in this conference, though I doubt it.

b

    
    Or perhaps a lexical neoplasm.
    
    JP

    A simile is like a simile,
    a metaphor is a metaphor,
    a pleonastic pleonasm is pleonastic,
    and
    a tautology is the same as a tautology.

From a furniture ad:

	Shaker reproduction

    Not an oxymoron at all.  Many of the reproductions I've seen are indeed
    shake(r)y.

    Sure it is, Dick.

    Think about it, as Tom quotes.  YMMV, of course, but if you've ever
    seen one of the things quiver and then fold up in a heap under
    someone...

language purist

From a garment label

	If necessary, use a cool iron
			    ~~~~ ~~~~

In addition to the oxymoron, the logic of the phrase is interesting. 

Clay

    
    heard on the way to work this am. ( but wondered if this was a real
    oxymoron... )
    
    spotty congestion
    
    jc

    	My teenage daughter has congested spots on her face, but that may
    not be the same thing.

    Probably not the right string for this, but I keep hearing what I
    consider ill-educated radio commentators describing people who, when
    their original plans are frustrated, "try a different tact."
    
    I keep thinking they mean "WELL, I guess being a boorish OAF didn't
    work, p'raps NEXT time I'll pose as someone with manners!"
    
    Never fails to amuse.  But then I'm easy...
    

    >>"try a different tact."

	I know what you mean, Dan'l dear.  People say this with
	frightening regularity, don't they?  Cringe every time.

    I always have to sew on, or even (which is PAINful!) nail on, any
    regardli I fancy.  Pray, Dear Di, whence the press-on sort?  Tnx ever so...
                                                                          

    G'day,
    One of my pet peeves - and I heard it yesterday on tv... transposition
    of letters in straightforward words.. not done for effect, but because
    the speaker, presumably, has never got it right....
    
    
    
    "I  arksed him for the time" is an example of the one I hate most...
    
    derek
    

    "nucular" bugs me the most...
    
    ed

"fill-um"
"advert-IZE-ment"

Both make me peevish.


Chele

>"adver-TIZE-ment"
    
    Standard American English pronunciation.
         

    G'day,
    
    >>Standard American English pronunciation.
      a double oxymoron...
    
    ;-)
    dj