This book develops a systematic model for the analysis and description of casual conversation in English, based on a large body of authentic data.

How casual games like Guitar Hero, Bejeweled, and those for Nintendo Wii are expanding the audience for video games. We used to think that video games were mostly for young men, but with the success of the Nintendo Wii, and the proliferation of games in browsers, cell phone games, and social games video games changed changed fundamentally in the years from 2000 to 2010. These new casual games are now played by men and women, young and old. Players need not possess an intimate knowledge of video game history or devote weeks or months to play. At the same time, many players of casual games show a dedication and skill that is anything but casual. In A Casual Revolution, Jesper Juul describes this as a reinvention of video games, and of our image of video game players, and explores what this tells us about the players, the games, and their interaction. With this reinvention of video games, the game industry reconnects with a general audience. Many of today's casual game players once enjoyed Pac-Man, Tetris, and other early games, only to drop out when video games became more time-consuming and complex. Juul shows that it is only by understanding what a game requires of players, what players bring to a game, how the game industry works, and how video games have developed historically that we can understand what makes video games fun and why we choose to play (or not to play) them. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.

Fine dining and the accolades of Michelin stars once meant chandeliers, white tablecloths, and suited waiters with elegant accents. The stuffy attitude and often scant portions were the punchlines of sitcom jokes—it was unthinkable that a gourmet chef would stoop to plate a burger or a taco in his kitchen. And yet today many of us will queue up for a seat at a loud, crowded noodle bar or eagerly seek out that farm-to-table restaurant where not only the burgers and fries are organic but the ketchup is homemade—but it’s not just us: the critics will be there too, ready to award distinction. Haute has blurred with homey cuisine in the last few decades, but how did this radical change happen, and what does it say about current attitudes toward taste? Here with the answers is food writer Alison Pearlman. In Smart Casual:The Transformation of Gourmet Restaurant Style in America, Pearlman investigates what she identifies as the increasing informality in the design of contemporary American restaurants. By design, Pearlman does not just mean architecture. Her argument is more expansive—she is as interested in the style and presentation of food, the business plan, and the marketing of chefs as she is in the restaurant’s floor plan or menu design. Pearlman takes us hungrily inside the kitchens and dining rooms of restaurants coast to coast—from David Chang’s Momofuku noodle bar in New York to the seasonal, French-inspired cuisine of Alice Waters and Thomas Keller in California to the deconstructed comfort food of Homaro Cantu’s Moto in Chicago—to explore the different forms and flavors this casualization is taking. Smart Casual examines the assumed correlation between taste and social status, and argues that recent upsets to these distinctions have given rise to a new idea of sophistication, one that champions the omnivorous. The boundaries between high and low have been made flexible due to our desire to eat everything, try everything, and do so in a convivial setting. Through lively on-the-scene observation and interviews with major players and chefs, Smart Casual will transport readers to restaurants around the country to learn the secrets to their success and popularity. It is certain to give foodies and restaurant-goers something delectable to chew on.

Dress Casual: How College Students Redefined American Style

Platform work – in which work activities are channelled through web platforms or apps – has emerged as one of the major transformations in the world of work over the past decade. Although platform work presents many of the labour law issues related to casual work – often linked to insecure or precarious working conditions – until this book, no in-depth research has been conducted on specifically positioning platform work in the context of casual work arrangements. The author systematically evaluates how strategies aimed at regulating casual work can be extended to enhance the employment relationships and working conditions of platform workers. The analysis proceeds through a detailed comparative legal analysis of casual work in four industrialized countries – the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy – shedding light on the divergent regulatory approaches to this work typology. Then, it moves on to EU legislators’ efforts to develop a regulatory matrix on casual work, focusing on directives such as those on fixed-term work, working time, and transparent and predictable working conditions. The author concludes with recommendations for redefining the EU legal initiative on platform work, in light of the national and EU legal instruments examined in this contribution. Issues, such as the insecure nature of work, unpaid stand-by time, and work insecurity, come to the fore. The purpose of this book is to assist policymakers and social partners in finding viable legal solutions to tackle some of the labour protection challenges posed by platform work. At the same time, it serves as a reminder to EU policymakers, that existing legal instruments on casual work constitute an available blueprint which could be beneficial in dealing with such regulatory problems. Issues and topics covered, in a nutshell, include the following: what is captured under the label of casual work arrangements; the shared features between casual work and platform work, with a focus on their insecure working conditions; the employment status insecurity; the insecurity of working hours; the uncertainty of the continuity of employment; the income insecurity; peculiar traits of platform work; the development of the EU regulatory matrix on casual work; the relevance of the directives on working time, fixed-term work, and transparent and predictable working conditions, for the protection of platform workers; and the improvement of the proposal for a Platform Work Directive in light of the above instruments.

This book presents the research journey involved in sensitively unearthing and re-presenting the lived experience of women casual academics. The author weaves the as yet unvoiced stories of women casual academics with a reflective account of a narrative inquiry process. In doing so, she both critiques and offers an alternative to masculine and traditional academic discourse, and demonstrates the power of imagistic and theatrical communication. The book situates the felt human and post-human experience/s of narrative research alongside the philosophical and theoretical research practices encountered in an arts-informed narrative research project. Thus, the author establishes valuable frameworks for planning, undertaking and evaluating arts-informed narrative research; a growing and vibrant area of education research. This innovative work will be of interest to feminist researchers, teachers and supervisors, as well as students and scholars of women casual academics.

A Norah Mulcahaney mystery.