All and sundry are very concerned about quoting and misquoting, yet Glom blatantly misquotes me. I did not say that staring directly at a streetlight made no difference in my ability to see stars. I said that it 'had not had a great or very discernible effect'.
While Edward is gone, this point needs a reply. There is a significant difference between a quote, as in Edward's contention of what Armstrong said, and a paraphrase, what Glom used to characterize Edward's remark. By the nature of using a quote, one is asserting that the quote is correct in word and attribution and is used as a reasonable representation of the source relative to the context of the users point. A failure to meet these criteria opens the writer to just criticism. A paraphrase is to recast the original phrase but still requires the writer to maintain a reasonable scale and scope of the original meaning. A poor paraphrase also opens the writer to just criticism.
So the question is, does Glom’s paraphrase retain this scale and scope? Does the recasting of 'had not had a great or very discernible effect' into “no difference” matter or is Edward quibbling by splitting hairs?
The majority of people who perform the experiment of observing stars while looking directly at a street light will observe a vast difference in the ability to see stars, the complete inability to see fainter or medium brightness stars, relative to a dark sky. Yet, Edward notes a minimal effect in his observation. So on a scale of differentiation, does the phrase “no difference” fall significantly closer in meaning to "not very discernible" than it does to the expected normal experience of a very large difference. The answer is yes and Glom's paraphrase is a reasonable recasting of Edward’s words. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that the paraphrase is done within the same conversation, where Edward could issue a collegial correction or amplification of his original meaning and the reader can easily compare the paraphrase with the original words.
By this reasoning, I contend that Glom's paraphrase is reasonable and Edward is quibbling in making an accusation of a double standard. The quibbling is an obvious part of his suicide by banning tactic that appears to be engineered to get him out of an argument in which he cannot prevail. I’ll leave the speculation on his motivation as an exercise to the reader.
