Triple bill of romantic dramas based on the novels by Nicholas Sparks. In 'Dear John' (2010), while Special Forces Army Sergeant John Tyree (Channing Tatum) is home on leave, he meets beautiful college student Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried) and the two fall in love. When the time comes for Savannah to return to college, she promises to write to John during his 12-month enlistment overseas. However, their budding love affair is put to the test when John decides to re-enlist in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. 'Safe Haven' (2013), follows the fortunes of a guarded young woman who unexpectedly finds love in a North Carolina town. Katie Feldman (Julianne Hough) stands out on arrival in Southport. Beautiful but highly reserved, she makes it clear that she expects to have little involvement in the social life of the town and its inhabitants. However, an unforeseen chain of events brings Katie close to Alex (Josh Duhamel), a widower who runs a store while also attempting to bring up his young children. As she inexorably falls in love with Alex and the children Katie begins to let down her guard, but doing so threatens to raise the dark secret she has been protecting. Will she find a way to reconcile the trauma of her past with the possibility of a brighter future? 'The Best of Me' (2014), charts the relationship between Dawson Cole (Luke Bracey/James Marsden) and Amanda Collier (Liana Liberato/Michelle Monaghan), two people from opposite sides of town, who fall deeply in love as teenagers. However, Amanda's parents don't approve of Dawson and their relationship is short-lived due to a number of unfortunate events outside of their control. 20 years later, the pair are reunited at a mutual friend's funeral and it doesn't take long for their romance to rekindle. But although it seems the universe is conspiring to bring them back together after all this time, it seems there are still other forces at work which are determined to keep them apart...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. One morning, ordinary salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach. Metamorphosis, Kafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, is one of the twentieth century's most influential works of fiction, and is accompanied here by two more classic stories. 'He is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him' - Vladimir Nabokov

This volume represents discussion and comments from a conference of academics, corporate executives, and federal officials examining the ethics of mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers. Topics addressed are timely considering the massive restructuring occurring in corporate America as well as the trend to more fully integrate ethics into business school curriculums. . . . This book provides a thought-provoking and wide-ranging survey of the issue of ethics in US business. Highly recommended. "Choice"

This book seeks to relate ethical and philosophical considerations to the pragmatic concerns of business operation. Its audience is corporate executives and financial planners involved in mergers and takeovers.

"Business Information Alert"

In the wake of major insider trading scandals on Wall Street and serious debates over the benefits of corporate mergers and takeovers, ethics in business has become a topic of paramount importance--both in the corporate world itself and in the business school community. This volume presents a discussion by a distinguished group of corporate executives and academic specialists of the ethical issues involved in mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers. The result of a major conference sponsored by the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College, the book seeks to relate ethical and philosophical considerations to the pragmatic concerns of business operation. In their provocative exploration of the issues involved, the contributors address such subjects as employee interests, stakeholder welfare, managerial ethics, the problem of insider trading, and more.

Divided into five major sections, the volume begins with several chapters that offer an overview of ethical and moral issues in organizational transformations. The second section presents corporate, labor, and government views of the issues involved and includes chapters by Edward L. Hennessy, Jr. of Allied-Signal; Daniel W. Sherrick of the UAW; and David T. Scheffman of the Federal Trade Commission among others. In the following chapters, the contributors address ethical aspects of the strategies and tactics used to effect mergers and takeovers, paying particular attention to their impact on management and employee interests. Section Four presents some alternative approaches to corporate restructuring, while the final section includes actual case studies of the relationship between ethical issues and practical bottomline business concerns. Must reading for corporate executives and financial experts involved in the business of mergers and takeovers, this book is also an ideal supplemental text for graduate courses in business ethics.

Hoffman explores worldwide developments in the field of business ethics. The book is unique in that it not only discusses ethical issues faced by transnational corporations, but it also addresses the possibilities for international cooperation after the cold war, as well as regional business ethics issues from around the world. Included in the volume are discussions of business ethics in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Pacific Rim, and North and South America. A variety of issues and cases are contained in the volume including: the BCCI scandal, the IBM-Fujitsu case, intellectual property rights, transnational codes of ethics and theoretical and empirical studies about the moral responsibilities of transnationals, ethics and international law, ethics and development, and business ethics and cultural differences.

The work begins with a brief introduction that summarizes major themes contained in the book. The essays are collected in five sections. Section one contains cases and issues that are unique to regions and nations worldwide. Section two focuses on cases involving ethics and international law. These first two sections include a number of regional studies including ones from Brazil, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Hong Kong, and case studies including the BCCI scandal and the IBM-Fujitsu case. Section three features analyses of ethical issues faced by transnational corporations, for example, their relationship to host nations, their social responsibilities, and ethics programs within transnationals. Section four contains a summary and a debate about the development of transnational codes of business conduct including a discussion of efforts being sponsored by the United Nations. Finally, section five looks into the ethical problems that arise during economic development. Included here are contributions that raise questions about ethics and emerging financial markets, land-use, and the role of multinational corporations. This volume of essays will be an important resource for courses in business ethics, and international law, as well as a useful addition to business, academic, and public libraries.

"Business, Ethics and the Environment" explores the public policy debate surrounding the issue of business and its role in environmental matters. Unlike other discussions on this subject, the major focus here is not the monetary cost/benefit of environmental protection, but instead, the ethical obligations businesses may have for protecting the environment. A variety of questions are addressed by the contributors, including: Are businesses obligated to protect the environment? Should private enterprises take an active and leading role in solving a national problem? Should the solution be entirely a matter of public policy, involving business only to the extent that businesses are bound by law?

The work begins with a brief foreword by W. Michael Hoffman and an introduction by Robert Fredrick that outlines a framework for the debate and the major questions it entails. The essays are grouped in three separate sections, covering business and government interaction, public attitudes and involvement in environmental issues, and environmental problems and solutions. The first of these sections addresses a variety of topics and case studies, including hazardous waste management, low-level radioactive waste facilities, lessons from CPC regulation, and a Massachusetts solid waste dispute. The second section features a range of issues involving the public, such as the world-wide response to the environmental crisis, customers as environmentalists, and community-corporate conflict and the new environmentalism. Finally, the third section highlights such problems as the dolphin-tuna controversy, the use of animals by business, and international toxic waste trade. The work concludes with a comprehensive index. As a companion to "The Corporation, Ethics, and the Environment," this volume of essays will be an important resource for courses in business, public policy, and environmental issues, as well as a useful addition to business, academic, and public libraries.

Cyberhate: The Far-Right in the Digital Age explores how right-wing extremists operate in cyberspace by examining their propaganda, funding, subcultures, movements, and ideologies, as well as the legal and cultural responses offline far-right violence. Scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines provide extensive analysis of how the far-right operates on the internet and why this particular type of hate often progresses to extreme violence. Specific topics include far-right propaganda, bitcoin funding, online subcultures such as the manosphere, theories that explain why some take the path of violence, and specific movements including the alt-right and the terroristic Atomwaffen Division. Relying on manifestos and other correspondence posted online by recent perpetrators of mass murder, this book focuses on specific groups, individuals, and acts of violence to explain how concepts like "white genocide" and incel ideology have motivated recent deadly violence. This book would be of interest to anyone studying criminal justice, criminology, psychology, cybersecurity, religion, law, education, or terrorism studies.

For the past few years, a growing chorus of concern has been raised over the way humanity is mistreating the earth and its environment. Animosity has traditionally existed between environmental advocates and those they perceive as the enemy--the business community--as evidenced by a recent survey that showed that 75 percent of Americans believe business has a definite responsibility to reduce pollution. But business has also not always been recognized for what it has done for the environment. This volume seeks to address those issues, as well as the extent of the corporate world's ethical responsibility for cleaning up the environment.

The book focuses on the role of corporations and businesses in protecting the environment, utilizing studies of previous cases and crises as well as strategies and methods for future corporate conduct. The work begins with a foreword by Gregory H. Adamian, an introduction by Robert Frederick, and collected essays in four main subject groups. The first section provides an overview of the topic of business, ethics, and the environment, treating such issues as the ethical dilemmas of hazardous waste, the corporate commitment to the environment, and the corporation's environmental conscience. Section two presents a series of cases and analyses, including the Exxon Valdez crisis and the Union Carbide Bhopal gas incident, while section three probes corporate strategies such as the development and implementation of industry-wide codes of practice. Finally, section four looks to the future of and new approaches to business and environmental problems, considering the need to move environmental issues into the business school and to retool cultures for an ecologically sound future. As a companion to "Business, Ethics, and the Environment" this volume is an important resource for courses in business, public policy, and environmental issues, as well as a useful addition to business, academic, and public libraries.

Based on the encoding process, arithmetic codes can be viewed as tree codes and current proposals for decoding arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols belong to sequential decoding algorithms and their variants. In this monograph, we propose a new way of looking at arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. If a limit is imposed on the maximum value of a key parameter in the encoder, this modified arithmetic encoder can also be modeled as a finite state machine and the code generated can be treated as a variable-length trellis code. The number of states used can be reduced and techniques used for decoding convolutional codes, such as the list Viterbi decoding algorithm, can be applied directly on the trellis. The finite state machine interpretation can be easily migrated to Markov source case. We can encode Markov sources without considering the conditional probabilities, while using the list Viterbi decoding algorithm which utilizes the conditional probabilities. We can also use context-based arithmetic coding to exploit the conditional probabilities of the Markov source and apply a finite state machine interpretation to this problem. The finite state machine interpretation also allows us to more systematically understand arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. It allows us to find the partial distance spectrum of arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. We also propose arithmetic codes with memories which use high memory but low implementation precision arithmetic codes. The low implementation precision results in a state machine with less complexity. The introduced input memories allow us to switch the probability functions used for arithmetic coding. Combining these two methods give us a huge parameter space of the arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. Hence we can choose codes with better distance properties while maintaining the encoding efficiency and decoding complexity. A construction and search method is proposed and simulation results show that we can achieve a similar performance as turbo codes when we apply this approach to rate 2/3 arithmetic codes. Table of Contents: Introduction / Arithmetic Codes / Arithmetic Codes with Forbidden Symbols / Distance Property and Code Construction / Conclusion

Your natural gift is the natural expression that spontaneously unfolds when you open your heart. This book is for people who have always suspected they have uplifting qualities that can make a difference in the world and with the people they interact with. Rather than declaring success principles and spiritual truths as many other spiritual and personal growth books, this book functions as a tool that allows you to experience your unique spiritual essence for yourself. The early chapters walk readers through the elemental natural gifts of human beings and how to see your unique blend of these qualities. The book then shows how to unlock your natural gift from your limiting self beliefs and to awaken it. Next it guides you to walk with your natural gift in your daily life and to offer it to others. Finally, it teaches you how to keep yourself intact and find support when walking with your heart open - the natural state for offering your gift. Michael Hoffman is a trained spiritual guide who offers workshops and coaching for people to directly experience their spiritual connection and natural gift. He trained with a Spiritual Teacher, Zen Master, and Shaman for 22 years to guide and support people in their spiritual development. Michael also holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from Boise State University and has worked as a psychotherapist and spiritual guide since 1986.

Robert Frost and Edward Thomas met in a bookshop in London in 1913. During the next four years, the two writers--Frost, an unknown poet who had sold his farm in New Hampshire in order to take his family to England for one last gamble on poetry and Thomas, a sad literary journalist--formed the most important friendship between poets since that of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Their friendship only ended with Thomas' death in Arras, France, a casualty of the First World War.
The story of Edward Thomas' turn to poetry, in fact, has been dominated by the account of Robert Frost's injunction: to break his existing prose into lines, bringing his musical cadence and his direct speaking voice into conversation with formal prosody. Thomas himself had already championed Frost's own early work: "These poems are revolutionary because they lack the exaggeration of rhetoric.... Their language is free from the poetical words and forms that are the chief material of the secondary poets. The metre avoids not only old fashioned pomp and sweetness, but the later fashion also of discord and fuss. In fact the medium is common speech.... Mr. Frost has, in fact, gone back, as Whitman and as Wordsworth went back, through the paraphernalia of poetry into poetry once again."
This book presents for the first time the full record, arranged chronologically, of what the poets wrote to, for, and about one another--their letters, poems, and Thomas' review of Frost's first two books. They reveal a warmth and charm that give us the key to the relationship between Frost and Thomas.

From the (mock) introduction by the (fictitious) translator: "'The Naked Ear' is an unpolished, apparently unfinished piece of writing by an author about whom nothing is known, not even his name. The manuscript that chanced to come into my possession in so bizarre a fashion is signed--self-mockingly, one presumes--'John of Silence.'" Who was this 'John of Silence'? Was he alive? Could he be found? Surely a man doesn't pour out his soul like this into four thick notebooks... only to toss them into an unlocked train station locker?..."

The six stories that make up "Little Pieces" are all set in Japan, land of Zen austerity, manga excess, and much in between. In "First Snow," a joyous chance reunion of a babysitter and her one-time charge unexpectedly spirals into confession and response. Sonoko, in the story that bears her name, slips with practiced ease out of the world of her life into that of 11th-century Japan. In "The Miracle," the miracle is that nothing happens-until the end. The narrator of "The Concussion," age 87, sums up the spirit of these stories when, responding to the disbelief he inspires, he says, "I have the sort of face that turns everything I say into a joke. Still..." "First Snow" and "Sonoko" first appeared in The Japan Times.

Green will illustrate and shed new light on the gamut of issues associated with renewable energy, a topic whose importance increases exponentially with every temperature record-setting year. Jane and Michael Hoffman use their years of experience to explain the technological and economic future of this ecologically significant issue. They incisively explain its politics: what countries are doing right now and, most importantly, what we should be doing. Green will cut through the hype and polemics surrounding ecologically friendly technologies and present the unvarnished truth. It will guide the reader through the misinformation and confusion over global warming, and demonstrate the degree to which renewable energy can be part of the solution.

The four stories of Part I vary in setting from Shinobazu Pond to 19th-century Germany, where Dostoevsky toils in despairing, poverty-stricken exile on Crime and Punishment. The "Nectar Fragments" of Part II are linked short stories set in the fictional Montreal suburb of Nectar, where an aging recluse living like a prisoner in the house in which he grew up struggles to recast the story of Abraham and Isaac into modern form. Was Abraham a saint, or a murderer? No one suspected the recluse himself had a son - who one day appears, seemingly out of nowhere...