Face detection and clustering for video indexing applications

This paper describes a method for automatically detecting human faces in generic video sequences. We employ an iterative algorithm in order to give a confidence measure for the presence or absence of faces within video shots. Skin colour filtering is carried out on a selected number of frames per video shot, followed by the application of shape and size heuristics. Finally, the remaining candidate regions are normalized and projected into an eigenspace, the reconstruction error being the measure of confidence for presence/absence of face. Following this, the confidence score for the entire video shot is calculated. In order to cluster extracted faces into a set of face classes, we employ an incremental procedure using a PCA-based dissimilarity measure in con-junction with spatio-temporal correlation. Experiments were carried out on a representative broadcast news test corpus

Justice Holmes, Ralph Kramden, and the Civic Virtues of a Tax Return Filing Requirement

A major goal of some tax reform proponents is the elimination of the return filing requirement for many or all Americans. Although the President\u27s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform heard several hours of testimony concerning the possibility of a return-free income tax system, the Report of the Panel failed even to discuss the issue. This Article contends that the Panel was right to recommend (by implication) the retention of a return-based tax system, given the Panel\u27s recommendations for major tax simplification. As long as the return filing obligation is not unduly burdensome which it would not be under the Panel\u27s simplification proposals a filing obligation has significant civic virtues. A return-based system represents an appropriate compromise on the level of visibility and painfulness of taxation, and the filing of an tax return can serve an important ceremonial function as an expression of fiscal citizenship. The civic potential of return filing is not now realized because of the tremendous complexity of the income tax, but that potential could be realized under a simplified system