The thing about Derb. . .

. . .is that, while at times he can be an irremediable curmudgeon, you can't help feeling an occasional pang of sympathy for the guy. You get the impression that even though he delights in jamming a thumb in the eye of anyone who questions him, he can't figure out why on earth anyone would take it personally.

But, say what you will, the man is an open book. Today, he posted a link to the results of a personality test he took after reading an article about it in the London Times, and while he seemed a little taken aback by them, he conceded that he wasn't exactly shocked. It was somewhat what I expected the results of a John Derbyshire personality test would look like, though I must I wouldn't have expected them to be quite so emphatic, and I never would have expected his scores on vulnerability and emotionality to be anywhere near where they are.

Having seen Derb's results, I decided to take the test myself. And, like Derb, I can't really argue with the results. They seem pretty accurate to me. From what I can tell, the only areas where Derb and I have anything in common is that we are both extremely lacking in self-discipline, and we both seem to be extremely slow-paced people.

In my case, the neuroticism score was a bit higher than I would have thought, but not off-the-charts. I do have acquaintances who might take issue with the score as a pretty low-ball figure, however.

I've always loved taking those kinds of tests, so I thought I'd share it with my reader(s). I can't vouch for the scientific validity of the results, though as I said before, it seems to have me pretty well pegged. Take it yourself and see what you think.