On July 13th, Ken Jennings won over 1 million dollars on Jeopardy!  On July 23rd, he has also set the record for the most money won in one game- $75,000.  He was finally defeated on November 30th, by Nancy Zerg, but he finished with over $2,500,000.  In the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, he finished in second place.

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time, is now hard at work at the series' eleventh  book, Knife of Dreams. It is due out sometime in 2005, and the author proclaims that it "will have enough incidence to please anyone," which is very good news to the series' fans, as the series has been heavily declining ever since the fourth book. Jordan also says he will hold off on writing the next and last two series' prequels until after he finishes the twelfth and last main series entry. In other Wheel of Time news, the splitting of the massive books into more kid friendly sized novels (only around 500 pages each now) continues with The Hunt Begins and New Threads in the Pattern, two halves of the second book of the series, The Great Hunt. This is following the split of The Eye of the World into From the Two Rivers and To The Blight. On a related note, the Nerd Herd's own resident Jordan fanatic does not get the point of this, as this is not a kid friendly series: there is a lot of violence and implicit sexuality in the series, not to mention its a bit on the scary and disturbing side sometimes. It may also be a bit hard to understand for them.

 

Today someone called me a "100% nerd."  They meant it as an insult, but I didn't take it that way.  They might not know what it means to be a nerd, but I certainly do.  It means I am never ashamed of who I am.  I can stand proud and say, "I don't care what you say about me, because I am content with who I am."  This is a person who goes to my school and has continually picked on me throughout the past year... however, they do all their bullying online, under false screen names.  I am only glad that I don't have to be that ashamed of who I am or what I'm doing- ever.  Even though it sounds cliche, making fun of other people really shows an insecurity in yourself, and this boy makes fun of people a lot (yes, I have figured out who it is). 

 

I can only imagine what his reaction would be if he found this website.  I imagine he might have a field day with it.  But the beauty of this site is that not only are we above such feeble insults, I'd like to think that creating a place where all of us "nerds" can meet helps to create a supporting atompophere as well.  Because it's not easy to take unfounded criticism, I know it's not.  But it's not going to be prevented, so we have to be above it and deal with it.

 

I just love the irony.  In his attempt to insult me, he tells me I'm a nerd.  Little does he know I have created a whole website proclaiming that fact to the world.