Planet Nerd is a television comedy variety programme broadcast on Channel 31 Melbourne produced by RMITV. It stars local Melbourne comedians Dan Walmsley, Paul Verhoeven, Ben McKenzie, Simon Barber, Jason English-Rees, Andrew Doodson, Lou Pardi, and Rob Lloyd, and features other local Melbourne talent as well. Segments from the program are uploaded to YouTube, and there is also an official video podcast.
Planet Nerd was nominated for Best Comedy Program in the 2008 Antenna Awards, which celebrate the best of Australian community television, though they did not win the award.
On 17 September 2008, a new interview with Rocket Boom creator, Andrew Baron, was posted on the Planet Nerd web site. While no other new content has appeared, the original twelve episodes were repeated multiple times by Channel 31, as late as June 2009. It was also been broadcast on Triangle TV in New Zealand in 2007.
Aimed at the geek demographic, Planet Nerd offers a variation on the variety show format, with host Dan Walmsley acting as an anchor, sometimes accompanied by one of the other presenters, throwing to various segments which include documentaries, reviews and sketches. Each week the hosting segments are filmed in a different context, often forming a series of linked sketches themselves.
Nerd (adjective: nerdy) is a descriptive term, often used pejoratively, indicating that a person is overly intellectual, obsessive, or lacking social skills. They may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical or relating to topics of fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Additionally, many nerds are described as being shy, quirky, and unattractive, and may have difficulty participating in, or even following, sports. Though originally derogatory, "Nerd" is a stereotypical term, but as with other pejoratives, it has been reclaimed and redefined by some as a term of pride and group identity.
The first documented appearance of the word "nerd" is as the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950), in which the narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo. The slang meaning of the term dates to the next year, 1951, when Newsweek magazine reported on its popular use as a synonym for "drip" or "square" in Detroit, Michigan. By the early 1960s, usage of the term had spread throughout the United States, and even as far as Scotland. At some point, the word took on connotations of bookishness and social ineptitude.
Nerd is a term for a person who is intellectually knowledgeable or bright, but socially inept.
Nerd or nerds may also refer to:
In entertainment:
Other uses:
Navy eReader Device, or NeRD, is an e-reader developed by the United States Navy's General Library Program for use aboard U.S. Navy submarines. Released in May 2014, it gives sailors accessibility to the Navy's library and various books while on a submarine, which has limited storage space for paper books and sailors are normally on a six-month deployment. Each submarine is assigned five NeRDs. The Navy has plans to release the device to the surface fleet, starting with the smaller ships.
The NeRD device:
It is loaded with nearly 300 books in a wide variety of genres, some of the books are: