Nerd King

I am in total agreement with Charlie.... anyone under the age of 30 doesn't have the right to become king of the nerds.  They just don't have the street cred.  It's like become a civil rights activists now-a-days... we aren't saying there isn't work still to be done, but you really aren't going to be a MLK or Malcom X.  To really be a nerd king you need to have predated Star Wars, which pretty much cancels me out, and I'm almost 40.  After Star Wars and Atari, nerdity became an obsession of plenty of mainstream kids, which in turn lead to a general acceptance of nerd persuits.  By the time Peter Jackson released his LoTR series and X-box hit the shelves, nerdity was widely accepted, and in some cases embraced. 

Mike, you're not THAT old.

(This post sponsored by Geoff's denial.)

We still love you "mature" nerds 

To really be a nerd king you need to have predated Star Wars, which pretty much cancels me out,

When I was a freshman at Purdue, in 1975, I found the PDP-9 could play Space War .  This 3-minute audio drama is autobiographical:

~Paul S.

Nerd cred - I saw Karloff's "The Mummy" and the McQueen's The Blob as first releases.  I played Star Trek on an IBM 360, played and beat the most advanced chess playing computer in the world, MIT's McHack VI (OK, it was a fish, but still in 1970 it was hot), and played D&D using the three book boxed set (5.5" x8") that cost 5 bucks.

You don't even want to know what I did in HS, some of which I was prohibited from telling our son.  Mike and Geoff are excellent second generation (maybe third) nerds, but like Mike said, all the serious ridicule has passed.  Nerd is in.