As John Dunne would be the first to point out, however, an Oscar was never an unalloyed blessing.

Even deregulation of transportation has not been an unalloyed blessing, as shown by increasing airline delays and mounting safety hazards.

But is program automatic exposure an unalloyed blessing?

"It's almost an unalloyed blessing," Mr. Forbes, who advocates a flat 17 percent income tax, said in an interview.

This may sound like an unalloyed blessing, but that is not how things work in global financial markets.

A glut - especially an early glut - is never an unalloyed blessing.

Mr. Perot's support is hardly an unalloyed blessing for a candidate; polls have shown his negative ratings to be higher than those of many incumbent officeholders.

But discoveries are not always unalloyed blessings, and the discovery of boredom has had some disastrous consequences in literature, film and art.

For many homicide detectives, the current drop in adult homicides is not an unalloyed blessing.

But as many other boom towns have also found, explosive growth has not been an unalloyed blessing here and in the surrounding Sevier County.