1. Are you sometimes so enthusiastic about your interests that you get carried away, and lose your self-consciousness in your passion for your subject?
2. Do you believe that people can be beautiful and smart at the same time?
3. Do you sometimes get interested in a book or a hobby that's really difficult to get into, but you do it anyway because it seems like such a cool thing to learn?
4. Do you like precision or exactitude, maybe even so much that a right answer is an aesthetically pleasing experience?
5. Do you find tracking what's fashionable just a teensy bit boring?
6. Do you admire people who are very knowledgeable even if their topic is a little arcane?
7. Don't you just love the word “arcane”?
8. Do you enjoy vivid imaginative accounts of alternatives to mundane reality?
9. Are you comfortable with the fact that Harry Potter wears big spectacles and is also a big athletic hero?
10. Do you find anti-intellectualism just a little bit…stupid?

If you answered yes to all of the above, award yourself 100 points. You win! You are a big fat cool American post-nerd. You are totally comfortable with yourself because you have finally moved beyond the ridiculous social categories of middle school!

If you scored less than 100, however, or even if you did score 100 but have friends who are still living in the Dark Ages, you need to read my new book, Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them.