Kevin Drum reports that “the internet toy du jour is a site that supposedly analyzes your writing and tells you which famous writer you most resemble.”

So I have to try it. First try, a random blog post, produced this horror:

I write like
Isaac Asimov

(Asimov: good ideas, bad writing.)

Second try, the first three pages from a paper I'm writing produced something even worse:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

OK, it's a paper about ICANN, and thus something of a horror show, but even so…

Fortunately, Kevin Drum thinks there's nothing to it.

This has to be may all time favorite quiz since I started this series if only because there were so many daffy choices: Slate's “Choose Your Own Apocalypse.”

You get to pick up to five. It was not an easy choice, as none really captured the combination of kleptocracy and resistance to certain types of change that I think describes the ills to which our government tends. But, hey, it's just meaningless, so I picked somewhat seriously, “Peak Water” and “Peak Oil” and “Rising Sea Levels” and somewhat facetiously “Pax Sinica” and “Patriot Act” (based on the attached definition; I don't think the bill, while negative in important ways, is apocalyptically bad).

The verdict:

You are an anthropocentric pragmatist. You think the American citizenry controls its fate, and we won't screw up enough to destroy the human race. You'll know you're right when: Vigilantes along the Mexican border start a war over immigration; the United States has a socialist revolution.

Yah, right.

Feel free to post your choices and outcomes below.

The typeanalyzer says this blog has a personality type of “INTJ – The Scientists”…at least yesterday.

Could it be because I used the word “alligator”?

(Later) Actually, whatever this thing is doing, it's pretty silly — I've just run four different posts through it and gotten four different answers. Unless I am group blog, perhaps?

You know, I actually sort of believe this:

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern – you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

If it can't be Paris then, yes, Amsterdam.