Race as/and the Trace of the Ghost: Jurisprudential Escapism, Horizontal Anxiety and the Right to be Racist in Boe Trust Limited

This contribution draws on critical race theory and critical legal theory in order to read and critique the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment of Erasmus AJA in BoE Trust Limited 2013 3 SA 236 (SCA). It will specifically focus on the contested jurisprudential and racial politics reflected in the reasoning followed in the judgement. It specifically takes issue with the way in which the judge avoided dealing directly with the constitutional and political implications of racially-exclusive testamentary provisions. Three specific features of the judgment are highlighted in the note as problematic: first, the rhetorical moves and ‘legal interpretive techniques’ by which the judge escaped the basic legal texts governing the situation in which a racially discriminatory provision is included in a will, as well as the substantive reasoning and normative choices that those texts necessarily invite. Secondly, how the escape from those legal texts evinces, or perhaps even facilitated, a certain evasion of, or anxiety towards the horizontal application of the Bill of Rights which explicitly proscribes overt (racial) discrimination by private non-state actors. And thirdly, how by following a formalist legal approach, one in which the basic assumptions of liberal legalism and capitalism are viewed as natural, normal and immutable, the judgment lacks a decisive rejection of racism. The judgment’s uncritical adulation of the common law of succession (and specifically the principle of freedom of testation) and its negation of a more substantive, constitutionally-infused mode of reasoning and adjudication generally reflects a conservative or traditional view of law. It is suggested that this view of law is problematic in our current post-apartheid context for two central reasons: it stands in tension with the project of transformative constitutionalism and prevents the coming into being of a more critical race jurisprudence for post-apartheid South Africa. &nbsp

Towards Understanding the Interconnection between Celestial Pole Motion and Earth’s Magnetic Field Using Space Geodetic Techniques

The understanding of forced temporal variations in celestial pole motion (CPM) could bring us significantly closer to meeting the accuracy goals pursued by the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), i.e., 1 mm accuracy and 0.1 mm/year stability on global scales in terms of the Earth orientation parameters. Besides astronomical forcing, CPM excitation depends on the processes in the fluid core and the core–mantle boundary. The same processes are responsible for the variations in the geomagnetic field (GMF). Several investigations were conducted during the last decade to find a possible interconnection of GMF changes with the length of day (LOD) variations. However, less attention was paid to the interdependence of the GMF changes and the CPM variations. This study uses the celestial pole offsets (CPO) time series obtained from very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations and data such as spherical harmonic coefficients, geomagnetic jerk, and magnetic field dipole moment from a state-of-the-art geomagnetic field model to explore the correlation between them. In this study, we use wavelet coherence analysis to compute the correspondence between the two non-stationary time series in the time–frequency domain. Our preliminary results reveal interesting common features in the CPM and GMF variations, which show the potential to improve the understanding of the GMF’s contribution to the Earth’s rotation. Special attention is given to the corresponding signal between FCN and GMF and potential time lags between geomagnetic jerks and rotational variations.J.M.F was partially supported by Spanish Projects PID2020-119383GB-I00 (AEI/FEDER, UE) and PROMETEO/2021/030 (Generalitat Valenciana). S.B was supported by the Generalitat Valenciana SEJIGENT program (SEJIGENT/2021/001) and by the European Research Council (ERC) under the ERC2017-STG SENTIFLEX project (Grant Agreement 755617)

The Short-Term Prediction of Length of Day Using 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (1D CNN)

Accurate Earth orientation parameter (EOP) predictions are needed for many applications, e.g., for the tracking and navigation of interplanetary spacecraft missions. One of the most difficult parameters to forecast is the length of day (LOD), which represents the variation in the Earth’s rotation rate since it is primarily affected by the torques associated with changes in atmospheric circulation. In this study, a new-generation time-series prediction algorithm is developed. The one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D CNN), which is one of the deep learning methods, is introduced to model and predict the LOD using the IERS EOP 14 C04 and axial Z component of the atmospheric angular momentum (AAM), which was taken from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) since it is strongly correlated with the LOD changes. The prediction procedure operates as follows: first, we detrend the LOD and Z-component series using the LS method, then, we obtain the residual series of each one to be used in the 1D CNN prediction algorithm. Finally, we analyze the results before and after introducing the AAM function. The results prove the potential of the proposed method as an optimal algorithm to successfully reconstruct and predict the LOD for up to 7 days.S.B. was partially supported by Generalitat Valenciana (SEJIGENT/2021/001) and the European Union—NextGenerationEU (ZAMBRANO 21-04). J.M. was partially supported by Spanish Projects PID2020-119383GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and PROMETEO/2021/030 (Generalitat Valenciana)

Race as/and the trace of the ghost: jurisprudential escapism, horizontal anxiety and the right to be racist in BoE trust limited

This contribution draws on critical race theory and critical legal theory in order to read and critique the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment of Erasmus AJA in BoE Trust Limited 2013 3 SA 236 (SCA). It will specifically focus on the contested jurisprudential and racial politics reflected in the reasoning followed in the judgement. It specifically takes issue with the way in which the judge avoided dealing directly with the constitutional and political implications of racially-exclusive testamentary provisions. Three specific features of the judgment are highlighted in the note as problematic: first, the rhetorical moves and ‘legal interpretive techniques’ by which the judge escaped the basic legal texts governing the situation in which a racially discriminatory provision is included in a will, as well as the substantive reasoning and normative choices that those texts necessarily invite. Secondly, how the escape from those legal texts evinces, or perhaps even facilitated, a certain evasion of, or anxiety towards the horizontal application of the Bill of Rights which explicitly proscribes overt (racial) discrimination by private non-state actors. And thirdly, how by following a formalist legal approach, one in which the basic assumptions of liberal legalism and capitalism are viewed as natural, normal and immutable, the judgment lacks a decisive rejection of racism. The judgment’s uncritical adulation of the common law of succession (and specifically the principle of freedom of testation) and its negation of a more substantive, constitutionally-infused mode of reasoning and adjudication generally reflects a conservative or traditional view of law. It is suggested that this view of law is problematic in our current post-apartheid context for two central reasons: it stands in tension with the project of transformative constitutionalism and prevents the coming into being of a more critical race jurisprudence for postapartheid South Africa

Law's Poverty

This article adopts an analysis that explicitly politicises poverty and relates it to the concrete history of racialised capitalism and structural inequality that defined colonialism and apartheid and continues to persist and intensify in "post"-apartheid South Africa. Rather than formulating racialised poverty in legalist, economist or managerial terms, it should rather be understood as a form of oppression that comprises exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Such a formulation would make social structure, historical injustice and power central and would also allow for poverty to be grasped beyond a purely distributive logic by bringing to light the non-distributive, non-economic dimensions of poverty. Comprehending poverty in this way, as not only a question of economic distribution and empowerment, but also one of ethical, moral and even ontological recognition necessitates an enquiry into the emancipatory force of rights. Given their centrality in political and social discourse and in legal scholarship on poverty, it is worth considering whether and to what extent rights can be utilised in the struggle against (racialised) poverty

AUOTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF POINT CLOUDS EXTRACTED FROM ULTRACAM STEREO IMAGES

Automatic extraction of building roofs, street and vegetation are a prerequisite for many GIS (Geographic Information System) applications, such as urban planning and 3D building reconstruction. Nowadays with advances in image processing and image matching technique by using feature base and template base image matching technique together dense point clouds are available. Point clouds classification is an important step in automatic features extraction. Therefore, in this study, the classification of point clouds based on features color and shape are implemented. We use two images by proper overlap getting by Ultracam-x camera in this study. The images are from Yasouj in IRAN. It is semi-urban area by building with different height. Our goal is classification buildings and vegetation in these points. In this article, an algorithm is developed based on the color characteristics of the point’s cloud, using an appropriate DEM (Digital Elevation Model) and points clustering method. So that, firstly, trees and high vegetation are classified by using the point’s color characteristics and vegetation index. Then, bare earth DEM is used to separate ground and non-ground points. Non-ground points are then divided into clusters based on height and local neighborhood. One or more clusters are initialized based on the maximum height of the points and then each cluster is extended by applying height and neighborhood constraints. Finally, planar roof segments are extracted from each cluster of points following a region-growing technique

THE ASSESSMENT OF ORTHOPHOTO QUALITY WITH RESPECT TO THE STRUCTURE OF DIGITAL ELEVATION MODEL

Orthophoto is an image which is being corrected geometrically so each object has to be situated on the corrected place consequently. Choosing the best DEM structure with respect to the area topographic is the most challenge which has more important role when dealing with rough surfaces displacements in duration of orthophoto procedures. The Lower DEM resolution makes points density lower and makes the procedure faster but cause to decreasing the product precision in compare to choosing the other one. However if a fine resolution DEM cause to very delicate displacement corrections aside of the other benefits but it makes to appear some undesired visualized errors like as elongation error especially in an areas which are hidden with some obstacles and there are lacks of data in an imaging. For preventing of such error in DEM structure calculation and earning the most benefits, we found and execute some solutions. In other word we answered to this question that what DEM resolution is the best for orthophoto production. In the following we have done some tests. First a dense DEM of a topographic area calculated and edited accurately then its density was reduced in some steps gradually. At each stage the root mean square error (RMSE) of interpolated heights of points which were laid in the distance between the corresponding DEMs pixels has been calculated respectively. Two interpolation methods (Nearest neighbour and Bilinear interpolation) have been used in this test. Decreasing the DEMs density or increasing the pixel size made the amounts of errors high and the rate of this changing dependent on the kind of topography directly. So we divided the area into some reasonable topographic classes then calculated our results for each class separately. The result of each strategy compared with each other and presented in both numerical tables and some illustrated images. Because of the relation between horizontal precision of orthophotos which are existed in the standard producing instruction and the accuracy of the DEM which are mostly related to its density, the suitable resolution for producing different scale orthophotos at each kind of topographic class have been calculated from mentioned methods consequences and shown as a final result