Caroline Baum reminds us that "Neutral Bias is an oxymoron."
She is correct — Neutral is the absense of bias, not a bias iunto itself.
Other noteworthy oxymorons:
Jumbo Shrimp
Pre-Heat
"with all deliberate speed" (i.e. "go quickly slowly")
anecdotal evidence
Larger half
deafening silence
Military Intelligence
The last example comes to us courtesy of George Carlin . . .
Public private-equity?
bureaucratic effiency?
It’s Curious
Cautiously Optimistic
constant variables that are consistent
Rumsfeld on Iraq…..2005
MS
Microsoft Works
Don’t mess with Caroline Baum; her wit is razor sharp.
Deliberate does not mean slowly, it means “with intention”. So “with all deliberate speed” doesn’t mean “go quickly slowly”, but rather “go quickly but not recklessly” or “quickly but stay in control”
And an anecdote can be evidence – the weakest form of evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
BDR
Independent Fed!
Neutral biased Fed! (LOL)
Conventional Wisdom
Postal Service
Guest Host
Press release!
very unique
Another favorite from Carlin: Two airplanes were involved in a “near miss.”
Pre-sliced
Free gift
There are non-contradictory examples of neutral biases. The favorite-longshot bias can be understood as a neutral bias because extreme odds are biased towards the center, towards 50/50. You could quibble about this example but there are others.
common sense!
(Fiscally) Conservative Republican
Seen on a television hair-care commercial:
“temporary permanents”
pretty ugly ;-)
“financial advisor code of ethics”?
“bear market analysis”?
“political integrity”?
Pre-heat is a redundancy, not an oxymoron. If you heat something up, you heat it before you do something else, so the “pre” is a useless prefix to a word that already has the “pre” concept inherent in it. [However, it’s a useful redundancy in recipes, because it reminds the cook to get the oven on early, not when the food goes into it.] An oxymoron, as most of the other examples show, comprises contradictory elements, as in deafening silence.
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Swiss Cheese.
OK, I know. The reference is from an episode of News Radio.
Disimproved?
Not in the dictionary but here you are…
http://www.google.com/search?q=disimproved&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Very interesting video on the fraud known as Federal Reserve system
http://www.theviewfromthepeak.net/newsblog/2007/03/no-debt-no-money.html
Link didn’t go through
http://www.theviewfromthepeak.net/newsblog/2007/03/no-debt-no-money.html
American cheese
cheese wiz (wit!)
not to interrupt you, but…
with all due respect, …
Athletic Scholarship?
Strategic Defense Initiative
Compassionate Conservative (if you want things to stay as they are, you can’t be bothered too much by existing suffering; if you want to end suffering, you have to want to change things)
Democratic Leadership (tried and failed to think of some catchy Democrat-originated phrases)
slightly more dubious:
Sustainable Living (“in the long run…”)
Real Valuation (“valuing” is something done by subjective people)
which leads to:
Objective Opinion
Impartial Viewpoint
etc.
To elaborate on one above, my mother likes to repeat the saying “Common sense is the least common of all the senses.”
And how about Alan Greenspan’s personal “blind trust” from 10 years ago that was described AT THE TIME as supposedly invested in solely “conservative” long term US government bonds?
Jim Jubak has one of the best pieces he’s ever written (in my opinion) over at MSN Money:
http://tinyurl.com/phv8w
Here’s the thrust of it in [my interpretation] (that would be “Eclectic’s omnipresent capability of ‘cutting to the chase.’ “:
[Institutional yield buyers push the limits of risk, because they’re ass-deep to an ostrich in present day value of costs of future liabilities for the Boomers who are equally ass-deep to an ostrich in “da-Nile” about having those liabilities met… and, lastly, da-Nile is a river that’s ass-deep in big crocodiles.]
—
Furthermore they push the limits of risk, even knowing it, without having the capacity to withdraw from the risk, because NONE OF THEIR PEERS are withdrawing, and so they’d just look like fools if they did it alone.
Peer pressure is one of the most powerful human emotional forces there is.
That means if there’s a tumult, they’ll all get eatin by the crocodiles in da-Nile, together, because none of them have the nerve to get off the train before it gets to the river bridge that’s washed out by the torrential rain of a risky debt market come undone.
The best oxymoron of all time:
LIFE AFTER DEATH
The reason I don’t get many follow up dinner dates? I tell the waiter to make my steak extra medium.
That over-arching descriptor of literary criticism, art, architecture, and the present human condition: Postmodern (which, when I tend to discuss it – after ordering the steak – might also explain my own no-follow-up present human condition)
Somebody ought to put a list of these together somewhere on the web and rank them. My two most recent favorites are
rational investor
sincere Presidential candidate (take a bow, Mr. Edwards, but look over your shoulder, here the rest come)
In honor of a real American hero.
Not one who landed on an aircraft carrier for the cameras but one who gave up the limelight.
Not the ones who lied and covered up their incompetence but one to whom his own truth drove to make a choice none of them would have made, ever.
Not the ones who spun his tragic death to their own means, but one who aggresively denied them their media soundbite.
But to Pat Tillman. Who gave up more than most ever have to defend our freedom.
Oxymoron? Friendly Fire.
How about ‘Predatory Lending’?