Lincoln boots Gates from competition

[Lepton]

A match-up between two famous American nerds.

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865), the sixteenth President of the United States, successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the Civil War, only to be assassinated less than a week after the war's end.

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, USA) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world's third richest person (as of 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen.

[Undercover Monk]

How is Lincoln a nerd
_________________
The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[Scurra]

I think Lincoln fits the definition of a "nerd": someone obsessively interested in the minutiae of something (in his case politics) but, unlike most nerds - but like Gates! - with the insight to know how to use it to his best effect.

I think it's too soon to tell if Gates will have the same effect as, say, Andrew Carnegie - who was a similar sort of person: in the right place at the right time to make a lot of money, and likewise chose to use that money to try and help improve the world. But who remembers Carnegie any more?
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[Dented Ford]

I think geek more appropriately fits that description.
Nerd is more pejorative, in terms of the difference like:

geek: someone who knows things that you don't, because he likes to know in detail about the things in which he's interested.
nerd: someone who knows things that you don't, because he likes to know things in detail about the things which more mainstream socially adjusted people consider pointless or pathetic.

(anorak: somewhere between the two, a little nearer nerd than geek)

[Amb]

Voting Lincoln over Gates. Gates is merely a product of his time.

[Undercover Monk]

Lincoln grew up on a freaking farm he was an outdoorsman at heart. definately not a nerd or geek. I should know as I definately fit somewhere in those categories.
_________________
The Classic Blunders:
1. never get involved in a land war in Asia
2.Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line
3. Never release Peyton Manning

[The Ragin' South Asian]

I think when all is said and done, this will be a lot closer than it is right now. But right now, Lincoln.

[MTGAP]