Boy, people can be so touchy.

Mr. Derbyshire,
In your exchange with Goldberg about how poor Haiti is or isn’t, you stated that its GDP per capita was at the 11th percentile, and you go on to claim that if your height was at the 11th percentile, you would not consider yourself all that short, since one in nine men is then shorter than you.
FYI, the height of 5′5″ for a male in the U.S. is at the 11.9th percentile. That means fewer than one in nine men are shorter than that 5′5″ male, who is, nevertheless, indisputably very short!
People shorter than he is are really, really short.
Since 1.4 percent of men in the U.S. are shorter than 5′2″, I would think they were “way shorter” than the 5′5″ guy, and so on down to the shortest guy in the world. None of this changes the fact that 5′5″ is very short.
I’m 5′7″ and have always thought of myself as “short.” I worked for years with a fellow who was 5′5″ and whenever I saw him, thought, “Wow. Danny’s really short!”
You may be fairly tall (it’s hard to tell from your pictures). If that is so I can see how the thinner air that you breathe might make it harder for you to think, but down where there is sufficient oxygen, it is easy to see that I am short, and that Haiti is grindingly poor, despite there being some shorter people (Danny) and some poorer countries. (Eritrea? Burundi? Please . . . are we not talking Western Hemisphere here?)
On the other hand, you may be short and in denial, but facts are facts . . .
I have managed to track down this lovely Java calculator which allows you to see the percentile for any whole-inch height from 4′8″ to 6′6″ … You will note that it comes from a site called “shortsupport” and that it opens at 5′6″ for men, which is the 20th percentile, and which is SHORT.

[Me] For the record, I’m 6′1″ — at the 93rd percentile, according to that Java app. Only one guy in sixteen is taller than me; but I’m not that tall.

If I were a mean-spirited heightist, I would sneer at everyone under 5′10″ as too short to be worth bothering with. Fortunately, being of a generous and charitable nature, I am tolerant of e-mails like this, in all their neurotic self-loathing, and am willing to take the time to post them for the whole world to see how a nagging sense of inadequacy can deform and corrupt a man’s soul. My hope, Sir, is that by exposing your pathetic obsession to the derision of millions, I may help you to shed it. You’re welcome!