There are not many people who can be said to have influenced and impressed researchers in so many disparate areas and language-geographic fields as Lauri Carlson, as is evidenced in the present Festschrift. His insight and acute linguistic sensitivity and linguistic rationality have spawned findings and research work in many areas, from non-standard etymology to hardcore formal linguistics, not forgetting computational areas such as parsing, terminological databases, and, last but not least, machine translation. In addition to his renowned and widely acknowledged insights in tense and aspect and its relationship with nominal quantification, and his ground-breaking work in dialog using game-theoretic machinery, Lauri has in the last fifteen years as Professor of Language Theory and Translation Technology contributed immensely to areas such as translation, terminology and general applications of computational linguistics. The three editors of the present volume have successfully performed doctoral studies under Lauri’s supervision, and wish with this volume to pay tribute to his supervision and to his influence in matters associated with research and scientific, linguistic and philosophical inquiry, as well as to his humanity and friendship.

This charming story celebrates the magic of playtime and invites us to pretend with Matt, Martha & Lily May Matt wants to play trees. Martha wants to play cars--but Lily May wants to play fairies! She has wings and a wand--but will Lily ever get her wish?

The animals ask each other what game they should play, but only Owl has an answer.

As I grew up in my hometown of Rock Falls, Illinois, listening to the radio, I often heard advertisements for a videogame retail store called Video Games ETC! The commercials were quite typical. They frequently detailed how they had "the latest and greatest video games and consoles!" And like any good business they had a tagline at the end of every commercial. Amidst a flurry of distorted rock guitar chords I heard, "Video games ETC! Just a game? I DON'T THINK SO!" As a child I agreed with this statement, but as an adult I feel compelled to defend it. This simple commercial tagline effectively responds to the prevailing negative attitudes toward playing videogames as a meaningful endeavor. This tagline conveys the attitudes of gamers in U.S. culture by claiming implicitly that videogames are more than just games, and the extent to which we are willing to take videogames "seriously." In this chapter, I provide an overview of my thesis performance project and the ideas that caused me to link videogames and performance together. Second, I examine a literal and performative understanding of videogames. Third, I discuss the ways videogames function as a method of performing self through my own narratives. Then, I emphasize how videogames are connected with and through culture by means of technological performance. Finally, I preview and discuss the specific research questions I answer in later chapters.

Introduced shortly after the United States declared its independence, poker’s growth and development has paralleled that of America itself. As a gambling game with mass appeal, poker has been played by presidents and peasants, at kitchen tables and final tables, for matchsticks and millions. First came the hands, then came the stories – some true, some pure bluffs, and many in between. In Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game, Martin Harris shares these stories while chronicling poker’s progress from 19th-century steamboats and saloons to 21st-century virtual tables online, including: Poker on the Mississippi Poker in the Movies Poker in the Old West Poker on the Newsstand Poker in the Civil War Poker in Literature Poker on the Bookshelf Poker in Music Poker in the White House Poker on Television Poker During Wartime Poker on the Computer From Mark Twain to “Dogs Playing Poker” to W.C. Fields to John Wayne to A Streetcar Named Desire to the Cold War to Kenny Rogers to ESPN to Star Trek: The Next Generation and beyond, Poker & Pop Culture provides a comprehensive survey of cultural productions in which poker is of thematic importance, showing how the game’s portrayal in the mainstream has increased poker’s relevance to American history and shaped the way we think about the game and its significance.

The animals ask each other what game they should play, but only Owl has an answer.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1841.