For more than three decades Gabriel Chagas of Brazil has been recognized as one of the world's best, with particular genius in card play.
That "genius" swiping my card was really just a dumb-ass with overly supportive parents who happens to work at an Apple Store.
Gazza's tears made the front pages: the sobs of the clown genius whose yellow card in the semi-final against West Germany meant he'd miss the final.
In calling out to all the misfits and the rebels and the troublemakers, the "round pegs in square holes" who "see things differently" and have trouble with the rules, the ad evokes the ideal first created by Emerson of a rough-hewed outsider who changes the world through a combination of courage, tenacity, resourcefulness and that God-given wild card, genius.
For instance, Ender, the prepubescent genius hero of Card's book, is unwittingly duped by a corrupt government into destroying an entire alien civilization.
You don't have to be a math genius to count cards, but good training software helps.
Holmboe quickly discovered Abel's talent, and proclaimed him as a "splendid genius" in his report card.
Mark was a card-trick genius, a bright-eyed under-age Johnny Cash alky.
ASIDE from the three or four people who genuinely enjoy shopping for gifts, I suspect that most people are deeply grateful to the genius who invented gift cards.
I'm not advocating a free pass or get-out-of-jail card for geniuses, whether certified or self-proclaimed, but suggesting rather that the inability of certain rare, strong, and unworldly characters to live humanely and within self-imposed limits is a tragedy in the classical, Aristotelian sense.
