Modifying Class Object

[Steve Holden]

* Stephen Hansen: [...]

I've heard that before, and have no idea why, nor any real interest in
solving it: I don't want to read cpl via Usenet, and prefer to read it
as a mailing list. Somewhere between Gmail->python.org->python.org
<http://python.org>'s usenet server->the world, some people don't seem
to get my posts. Yet it shows up on some news servers, not others.

No idea. Nothing I know of can solve it.

Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly to gmane?

Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?

regards
Steve

 

[Steve Holden]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Alf P. Steinbach <[email protected]

Right.

"pass by value" is a lower level notion.

And as you show below, in the paragraph marked [1], it can be used
to describe call by sharing very succinctly and precisely, just as I
did... ;-)


No. There's nothing at all succinct or precise about either "value" or
"reference" when speaking of programming languages, and using both
together just compounds that. They are loaded words. The phrase "call my
value where value is an object reference" is not clear, not obvious, not
helpful. It requires far too much explanation of every single word
there, depending on the background of who you are speaking to, to
explain how it does not exactly use any of the words in a way which the
person may be expecting, and making sure they understand that it does
not imply anything that those words usually imply.

I'm not even going to bother further-- I shouldn't have to begin with--
your entire post is full of arguments with no more weight then, "I say
this means that, and its clearer" with absolutely no regard for the fact
that all of these words have weight and meaning to the world outside of
your head.

[several paragraphs-worth of bothering further]

So you didn't believe me when I said

Of course this won't make the slightest difference. "'When I use a
word,' said Humpty ..."

regards
Steve

 

[Terry Reedy]

As far as the language spec is concerned the argument passing mechanism
seems to me to be identical to assignments, not just "very much like".

Except for the cross-namespace nature of the assignment, yes. Glad you
agree.

Your phrase "or objects derived therefrom" seems to imply that immutable
objects can be copied

No. Given

def f(*args, **kwds): print(args, kwds)

the objects bound to args and kwds are a tuple and dict *derived* from
(that collect together) the objects passed.

Terry Jan Reedy

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Duncan Booth:

The fact that C style pointers are used internally is an detail of the
CPython implementation.

Your statement seems pretty irrelevant to anything.

It's almost hilarious, quoting a single paragraph about how irrelevant the C
pointer is, and responding with something like that.

Do you understand that you're restating (in the form of exemplifying) what
you're quoting?

In CPython objects once created remain in the same memory location (and
their id is their address). Compare that to IronPython where the objects
themselves can move around in memory so they have no fixed address. Try
comparing the IronPython implementation to C pointers and you'll cause a
lot of confusion. e.g. someone might think the id() value is in some way
related to an address.

Did you /read/ what you quoted?

Ruby implements integers without using any pointers at all: there's nothing
in the Python specification which prevents a Python implementation doing
the same for small integers, in fact I believe it has been tried but wasn't
found to improve performance.

All theree of your points about Python are wrong; I don't know about the Ruby point.

First, the current Python language specification formally prevents the
optimization you mention, because there's no support for binding to do anything
but direct binding leaving object identities unchanged.

But in practice that's no big deal though: I can't imagine any code relying on
identities of completely immutable objects.

Second, even the variant that was tried improved performance.

But it would reportedly have wreaked havoc with imperfect C code.

Third, the optimization doesn't do away with pointers. If it did then it would
transform the language completely. The user's view is still one where names
denote pointers.

The terminology of 'objects', 'names', 'references' describes an abstract
machine. The Python runtime can implement it in any way it chooses so long
as those semantics are preserved. One implementation involves 'pointers',

It seems that you're thinking of C pointers.

That's pretty dumb since

(1) it doesn't make sense, and

(2) it has been mentioned in almost every article in this thread, including
my first, and including the single paragraph that *you quoted above*,
which was only about that, that

we're not talking about C pointers here.

Python names denote pointers by definition (of pointer).

but that word implies other baggage which is not a required part of the
model.

The word itself doesn't imply other baggage, no.

It might help to *read* what you're quoting, try to follow references, so on.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Steve Holden:

* Stephen Hansen: [...]

I've heard that before, and have no idea why, nor any real interest in
solving it: I don't want to read cpl via Usenet, and prefer to read it
as a mailing list. Somewhere between Gmail->python.org->python.org
<http://python.org>'s usenet server->the world, some people don't seem
to get my posts. Yet it shows up on some news servers, not others.

No idea. Nothing I know of can solve it.

Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly to gmane?

Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?

I thought the answer could help.

You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.

That's the difference between us.


Cheers,

- Alf

 

[Steve Holden]

* Steve Holden:

* Stephen Hansen: [...]
I've heard that before, and have no idea why, nor any real interest in
solving it: I don't want to read cpl via Usenet, and prefer to read it
as a mailing list. Somewhere between Gmail->python.org->python.org
<http://python.org>'s usenet server->the world, some people don't seem
to get my posts. Yet it shows up on some news servers, not others.

No idea. Nothing I know of can solve it.
Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly to gmane?

Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?

I thought the answer could help.

You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.

That's the difference between us.

Well, the way I see it, you assumed you knew better than Stephen, and
insisted on proposing a solution to a problem that he clearly stated he
had no interest in. I'm not quite sure, given that, what the point of
the advice was.

However, my question was genuine, based on your observed behavior. I
agree I might have phrased it more politely, but I do find your
self-assurance somewhat irritating.

regards
Steve

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Steve Holden:

* Steve Holden:

Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
* Stephen Hansen:
[...]
I've heard that before, and have no idea why, nor any real interest in
solving it: I don't want to read cpl via Usenet, and prefer to read it
as a mailing list. Somewhere between Gmail->python.org->python.org
<http://python.org>'s usenet server->the world, some people don't seem
to get my posts. Yet it shows up on some news servers, not others.

No idea. Nothing I know of can solve it.
Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly to gmane?

Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?

I thought the answer could help.

You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.

That's the difference between us.

Well, the way I see it, you assumed you knew better than Stephen, and
insisted on proposing a solution to a problem that he clearly stated he
had no interest in.

You're going into motivations, that it seems to me that you're projecting,
saying that any helpful suggestion mean that one thinks one knows better and
implies a desire to demonstrate imagined superiority.

You're trying to portray a helping hand as a negative personal characteristic of
the helper.

"the only reason that guy tries to help you is because he wishes to show how
superior he (thinks he) is".

That's your style in a fair number of postings, and now here:

* ad hominem attack,

* projection (at least the way I read it), and

* inject - noise - about - something - completely - irrelevant

Note that readers can easily guess about motivations for the last.

I'm not quite sure, given that, what the point of the advice was.

There are many people who read just the Usenet group, e.g. via Google groups.

When you say you don't understand the point of the advice, you're saying that

* those people don't matter, and that

* it doesn't matter whether they can read Stephen Hansen's articles.

That's

* slighting Stephen Hansen, and

* showing off an extreme ego-centric view of the world,

sorry.

However, my question was genuine, based on your observed behavior. I
agree I might have phrased it more politely, but I do find your
self-assurance somewhat irritating.

Thanks.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.

That phrase you keep using, "ad hominem"... it doesn't mean what you seem
to think it means.

An ad hominem attack is not when somebody makes a criticism of you
personally. It is when somebody says something along the lines of "Don't
pay any attention to Alf, he doesn't know what he's talking about, he's a
<whatever>".

You might not like the personal criticism, but that doesn't make it
either an attack or a fallacy.

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Steven D'Aprano:

That phrase you keep using, "ad hominem"... it doesn't mean what you seem
to think it means.

An ad hominem attack is not when somebody makes a criticism of you
personally. It is when somebody says something along the lines of "Don't
pay any attention to Alf, he doesn't know what he's talking about, he's a
<whatever>".

<url: http://www.tfd.com/ad+hominem>
ad hominem Latin [æd ˈhɒmɪˌnɛm]
adj & adv
1. directed against a person rather than against his arguments
2. based on or appealing to emotion rather than reason Compare ad rem See also
argumentum ad hominem

You might not like the personal criticism, but that doesn't make it
either an attack or a fallacy.

Steve Holden attacked only at the personal level, via characterization.

In response to ...

> >> No idea. Nothing I know of can solve it [failure of article propagation].

>
> Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly to gmane?

.... Steve Holden wrote:

<quote>
Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?
</quote>

Which doesn't have anything to do with any subject matter discussed, not even
the PS that he was replying to (which absolutely didn't warrant that description
or any negative response), but which does convey an impression of a person.

Then he wrote

<quote>
you assumed you knew better than Stephen [Hansen]
</quote>

which again is only about a person, and here about the person's motivations for
trying to help.

And there was a bit more with some collateral damage in the implications.

It's pretty dirty and yes, personal attacks are ad hominem; see above.

The ad hominem attacks that he appears to routinely engage in reflect back on
Steve Holden but the sub-threads that they invariably spawn also constitute a
high level of noise deflecting from whatever issue was discussed.



Cheers & hth. (especially the dictionary reference),

- Alf

PS: in order to recognize various forms of fallacies the following is a quite
useful resource: <url: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/>. I just typed
"fallacies" in the Firefox address bar. - DS

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Ben Finney:

In other words, a criticism of the person is only a fallacy if it is
both irrelevant to the argument *and* used to dismiss the argument.

Or to weaken an argument, or to draw attention away from an argument, or to
weaken future arguments...

However, although in this particular case the Ad Hominems constituted logical
fallacies, not all Ad Hominems are logical fallacies.

For example, if a person is a chronic liar, has a known history of lying, then
that can have a strong bearing on whether the person's claims -- technical or
about other persons -- should be seriously considered[1].


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf



Notes:
[1] As explained at <url:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/personal-attack.html>

 

[Gabriel Genellina]

* Steven D'Aprano:

That phrase you keep using, "ad hominem"... it doesn't mean what you
seem to think it means.
An ad hominem attack is not when somebody makes a criticism of you
personally. It is when somebody says something along the lines of
"Don't pay any attention to Alf, he doesn't know what he's talking
about, he's a <whatever>".

<url: http://www.tfd.com/ad+hominem>
ad hominem Latin [æd ˈhɒmɪˌnɛm]
adj & adv
1. directed against a person rather than against his arguments

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

2. based on or appealing to emotion rather than reason Compare ad rem
See also argumentum ad hominem

In response to ...

No idea. Nothing I know of can solve it [failure of article

propagation].

Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly to gmane?

... Steve Holden wrote:

<quote>
Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?
</quote>

Which doesn't have anything to do with any subject matter discussed, not
even the PS that he was replying to (which absolutely didn't warrant
that description or any negative response), but which does convey an
impression of a person.

This doesn't make it an ad hominem fallacie. This is just criticism
directed to your person, that you may like or not. It would be a fallacie
if it were intended to dismiss your argument.

PS: in order to recognize various forms of fallacies the following is a
quite useful resource: <url: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/>.
I just typed "fallacies" in the Firefox address bar. - DS

From the above site:

"this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character
of person making the claim [...] Second, this attack is taken to be
evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making
(or presenting)."

That second part is missing in S. H. posts.

 

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

However, although in this particular case the Ad Hominems constituted logical
fallacies, not all Ad Hominems are logical fallacies.

Yes they are. Using the reputation of someone to prove or disprove
their claims is a logical fallacy.

For example, if a person is a chronic liar, has a known history of lying, then
that can have a strong bearing on whether the person's claims -- technical or
about other persons -- should be seriously considered[1].

Yes but it's still a fallacy. Taking the author's history into account
may be valid for deciding that further investigation is warranted but by
itself it does not prove anything about the claims. Suggesting that it
does is fallacious.

"Bill is a liar therefore his statement is false" is a fallacy. "Bill
is a liar so take his claims with a grain of salt" is not.

There is another case. "Bill never tells the truth therefore his
claim is wrong" is not an ad hominem fallacy. It's a sylogism. It may
or may not be correct but if the first statement is true (Bill always
lies) then the the conclusion is true.

 

[Steven Howe]

Really, is this a relevant topic on a program mail list? You guys need
to get a room and start discussing angel counts on pinheads under the
blankets.

sph

However, although in this particular case the Ad Hominems constituted logical
fallacies, not all Ad Hominems are logical fallacies.

Yes they are. Using the reputation of someone to prove or disprove
their claims is a logical fallacy.

For example, if a person is a chronic liar, has a known history of lying, then
that can have a strong bearing on whether the person's claims -- technical or
about other persons -- should be seriously considered[1].

Yes but it's still a fallacy. Taking the author's history into account
may be valid for deciding that further investigation is warranted but by
itself it does not prove anything about the claims. Suggesting that it
does is fallacious.

"Bill is a liar therefore his statement is false" is a fallacy. "Bill
is a liar so take his claims with a grain of salt" is not.

There is another case. "Bill never tells the truth therefore his
claim is wrong" is not an ad hominem fallacy. It's a sylogism. It may
or may not be correct but if the first statement is true (Bill always
lies) then the the conclusion is true.

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Ben Finney:

The trouble is, the bulk of statements Alf is calling “ad hominem
attack†are, if one actually reads them, a criticism of his person. Not
intended as a connecting claim in an argument, but a claim *distinct
from* the argument Alf is engaged in.

That's false. Happily anyone can check back, e.g. up-thread here.

Judging by the last few months the number of persons engaging in ad hominem
attacks in this group is small, counted on one hand with possibly one finger
from the other hand to help. They're very active. But happily, few.

However, in the other non-moderated groups I participate in the number of such
persons is essentially *zero*, not counting sporadic visits from trolls.

So they're *not intended* to prove or disprove the specific claims that
immediately precede them. They're intended, at least partly, to provoke
self-reflection on the part of the person criticised and, ideally, an
improvement in behaviour.

And that's ad hominem, implying unacceptable behavior on my part, which if you
could back up you'd cited.

Failure to recognise a criticism as such, and instead repeatedly
flinging the term “ad hominem†around as though it has any bearing, is
an example of behaviour that could easily be improved, if only the
person engaging in it would stop.

Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Stephen Hansen:

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Alf P. Steinbach <[email protected]
[abundant snips which do not accurately represent who said what where
due to my own laziness]

Not sure, but perhaps it's possible to mail directly
to gmane?

Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?

I thought the answer could help.

You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.

That's the difference between us.

Well, the way I see it, you assumed you knew better than
Stephen, and
insisted on proposing a solution to a problem that he clearly
stated he
had no interest in.


You're going into motivations, that it seems to me that you're
projecting, saying that any helpful suggestion mean that one thinks
one knows better and implies a desire to demonstrate imagined
superiority.

You're trying to portray a helping hand as a negative personal
characteristic of the helper.

"the only reason that guy tries to help you is because he wishes to
show how superior he (thinks he) is".

That's your style in a fair number of postings, and now here:

* ad hominem attack,


I am, frankly, tired of this.

Please stop this overly obsessive sensitivity towards what you think are
"ad hominem" attacks. Just drop it. Its worthless. It degrades you. Your
arguments are frequently nothing more then, "I define the world this way
and you do not disagree so I declare your argument invalid".

I'm happy that even though that may (with some low probability) be your actual
opinion, it's incorrect.

You've
dismissed at least one of my arguments with a simple hand-waving of,
"That's invalid, cuz."

That is not a quote of me. It is a lie.

The thing is, there was no basis for 'cuz' beyond
"In my own head this is what I think, this is how I'm defining words"

That's also a lie, and it's not a quote of me.

And just to be clear, as anyone can see by looking up-thread, generally,
contrary to your claims, I give references for whatever that I suspect might be
genuinely misunderstood.

And so I've done in (nearly) every article in the original thread, especially
for the terms, and still people have posted articles apparently mis-interpreting
those terms in very non-sensible ways -- one gets tired of that, yes.

The response of others to such arguments has been, "Do you /really/ need
to be so absolutely right in everything?!" which is said in frustration,
irritation and with deep sighing.

It's true that that kind of insinuative arguments have been used in this group, yes.

It goes to alleged motives and alleged history instead of the technical, that
is, it is a purely personal attack.

So, ironically, you're here citing one kind of hominem attack -- not exactly
clever when you're arguing that such does not occur.

And then begins the loud declarations of ad hominem attacks.

Its not productive. It doesn't help your case or arguments.

Its tired.

It doesn't make your case. It doesn't make anyone but you look bad.
Every time you go on about, "YOU ARE AD HOMINEM'N ME!", you just make
yourself look worse.

Yeah. People can be snarky in a community. Maybe... MAYBE... Steve
Holden is periodically a little snarky at you. It is not without reason.
And your declarations of his ad hominem attacks against you comes off as
nothing but base /whining/.

Just drop it.

Its boring.

Also...

I'm not quite sure, given that, what the point of the advice was.


There are many people who read just the Usenet group, e.g. via
Google groups.

When you say you don't understand the point of the advice, you're
saying that

* those people don't matter, and that

* it doesn't matter whether they can read Stephen Hansen's articles.

That's

* slighting Stephen Hansen, and

* showing off an extreme ego-centric view of the world,


Please do NOT presume to take up my defense on ANY level.

I can handle myself, thank you.

I do offer unsolicited help now and then, as I gave you and for which Steve
Holden decided that a bit of personal attack would be suitable.

But my help was just as much in order to help others (who can't read your
non-propagated articles) as in order to help you personally. That's the spirit
of Usenet in many other groups. One just helps out, and often the reaction is a
"thank you" instead of an ad hominem attack (as with Steve Holden) or, as in
your case, faked quotes and general lies, which is border-line ad hominem.

Anyway, please stop post faked quotes and general lies, as you do above.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

That is not a quote of me. It is a lie.

Alf, although your English in this forum has been excellent so far, I
understand you are Norwegian, so it is possible that you aren't a native
English speaker and possibly unaware that quotation marks are sometimes
ambiguous in English.

While it is true that quoted text is officially meant to indicate a
direct quote, it is also commonly used in informal text to indicate a
paraphrase. (There are other uses as well, but they don't concern us now.)

Unfortunately, this means that in informal discussions like this it is
sometimes difficult to distinguish a direct quote from a paraphrase,
except by context. In context, as a native speaker, I can assure you that
Stephen Hansen's use of quotation marks is a paraphrase and not meant to
be read as a direct quote.

As a paraphrase, it's not a *lie* -- it should be read as Stephen's
*opinion* of your actions, not a direct quote. Stephen might, or might
not, be *mistaken*, but it's unlikely he's actively lying. Arguing
pedantically that you didn't write those exact words won't win you any
friends or supporters.

You can choose to defend yourself against a gross misrepresentation of
what you actually said; or you can accept that it captures the spirit
(but not the letter) of your words; or you can choose a middle position,
and accept that even if it is not a 100% accurate representation of your
statements, perhaps it is 90% accurate, or 10%, or 50%. The exact amount
doesn't really matter, and will be subjective, and frankly I don't care.
But whatever degree you choose to accept, it is obvious that a number of
people are not just being annoyed by your behaviour, but they are annoyed
enough to publicly chastise you for it. That includes Steve Holden, who
is usually far more even-tempered than (e.g.) me.

Without necessarily suggesting that you are 100% to blame for the
antagonism, its unlikely that so many disparate individuals are all 100%
mistaken. As you say, the public record is there for anyone who wishes to
read the history.

Believe me Alf, the fact that people are taking the time to try to argue
with you instead of just kill-filing you is a compliment.

 

[Robert Kern]

Really, is this a relevant topic on a program mail list?

Yes. Meta-discussions about how we discuss programming productively are also
on-topic.

--
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco

 

[Ethan Furman]

Believe me Alf, the fact that people are taking the time to try to argue
with you instead of just kill-filing you is a compliment.

It's a compliment I am not paying, although I am grateful to those who
are attempting to teach him. At the rate it's going, though, I don't
see myself buying any book he produces.

Besides the arrogant attitude, he is wrong on so many things about
Python it is truly stunning. He seems to have confidence born of
ignorance... a scary sight to see.

In the spirit of being helpful and not just being a jerk myself:

Alf,

Using smileys after declaring somebody is mistaken/wrong/etc makes you
look bad.

Not attempting to learn the language makes you look like an arrogant
idiot (case in point: passing-by-object).

Accusing anyone and everyone that criticizes you of making ad hominem
(sp?) attacks makes you look like a whiner.

After all is said and done - if you had a truly good grasp of Python, I
might buy your book even if you still had -- ummm -- a less than winning
presence on the mailing list; but right now your understanding is not
worth paying for.

Hoping-this-helps-but-not-really-expecting-it-to-ly yours,
~Ethan~

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Duncan Booth:

Would you care to expand upon your claim that my three points about Python
are wrong?

Sure. I already did in the article you're replying to, immediately following
what you quote above. You snipped that which you're asking for, so I requote:


<quote>
First, the current Python language specification formally prevents the
optimization you mention, because there's no support for binding to do anything
but direct binding leaving object identities unchanged.

But in practice that's no big deal though: I can't imagine any code relying on
identities of completely immutable objects.

Second, even the variant that was tried improved performance.

But it would reportedly have wreaked havoc with imperfect C code.

Third, the optimization doesn't do away with pointers. If it did then it would
transform the language completely. The user's view is still one where names
denote pointers.
</quote>


Since in the quoting above no reference to definition of "pointer" remains:
"pointer" refers to a copyable reference value as seen from the Python level, in
the same way as "pointer" is used by e.g. the Java language spec.

Are you saying that CPyhton objects move around, or that
IronPython objects are fixed to a single memory location or that their id
is related to their address?

No, I can't see how you can deduce any such connection from I wrote.

Whether objects "move around" depends on what exactly you mean by "move around",
and given that, it may then depend on the Python implementation.

However, from the Python point of view every object has a fixed unique id,
available via id().

Clue here:

IronPython 2.6 (2.6.10920.0) on .NET 2.0.50727.3082
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
45

I'm guessing wildly that you're trying to illustrate id's that don't correspond
to memory addresses?

If so, then that's correct: a Python (or Java, or whatever language) pointer is
not necessarily directly a memory address, and furthermore id is not guaranteed
to reproduce the bits of a pointer value -- which might not even make sense.

All that id does is to produce a value that uniquely identifies the object
pointed to, i.e. it corresponds to the pointer value, and although in CPython
that's simply the bits of a C pointer typed as integer, in IronPython it's not.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Steven D'Aprano:

Alf, although your English in this forum has been excellent so far, I
understand you are Norwegian, so it is possible that you aren't a native
English speaker and possibly unaware that quotation marks are sometimes
ambiguous in English.

While it is true that quoted text is officially meant to indicate a
direct quote, it is also commonly used in informal text to indicate a
paraphrase. (There are other uses as well, but they don't concern us now.)

Unfortunately, this means that in informal discussions like this it is
sometimes difficult to distinguish a direct quote from a paraphrase,
except by context. In context, as a native speaker, I can assure you that
Stephen Hansen's use of quotation marks is a paraphrase and not meant to
be read as a direct quote.

I'm aware that Stephen Hansen maintains that, but I'm not replying to his
ramblings about insanity and so on (perhaps he is a child, but I'm not replying
to that kind of stuff).

Anyway, in the original article he refererred to part of the quoted text,
quoting that in turn as an example of how allegedly patronising (or whatever)
I'd been to him.

Re-quoting a part *does not make sense* for paraphrasing.

And anyway, he wrote a piece where quotes seemed to signify quoting, drawing
conclusions from the quoted text.

It's just plain lying.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf