The 3D laser radar vision processor system

Loral Defense Systems (LDS) developed a 3D Laser Radar Vision Processor system capable of detecting, classifying, and identifying small mobile targets as well as larger fixed targets using three dimensional laser radar imagery for use with a robotic type system. This processor system is designed to interface with the NASA Johnson Space Center in-house Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) Retriever robot program and provide to it needed information so it can fetch and grasp targets in a space-type scenario

The Deep Architecture of American COVID-19 Tort Reform 2020-21

The rapid emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic produced massive state actions to protect in public health through the exercise of the police powers by local, state and national governments. In the United States there were calls early in the crisis to exercise the state’s power over tort law: As early as April 2020, the American Tort Reform Association published a White Paper, Responding to the Coming Lawsuit Surge that called for “reasonable constraints on . . . lawsuits that pose an obstacle to the coronavirus response effort, place businesses in jeopardy, and further damage the economy.”This article, prepared for the 27th Annual Clifford Symposium, “Civil Litigation In A Post-Covid World,” has two parts. First, it collects, as of the end of 2021, the various tort reforms adopted by United States jurisdictions and classifies them according to a variety of dimensions, including the scope of the immunities proposed and the changes to tort doctrines by which defendants were provided increased protections from suit. Second, it provides a theory of tort reform in the United States from the perspective of whether reforms are “tort negative” or “tort positive” and provides historical examples of both types, including the General Aviation Revitalization Act and the Federal Employers’ Liability Act.The Article analyzes the variety of tort reforms proposed and adopted since 2020 in connection with COVID-19 as a particular type of tort negative tort reform. Based on this analysis, policy makers can clearly see the lack of rational connection between the reforms adopted and the purported public policy goals upon which these legislative efforts were based. This Article should server as a cautionary tale of a failed effort at tort reform, and one that should not be emulated in the future

Law’s Duct Tape? Using Public Nuisance to Fix the Holes in Administrative Law

Public nuisance is in the news again. Three important opioid cases have been recently decided. In November plaintiffs lost a bench trial in California state court, and eight days later, the Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed a $465 million trial verdict, holding that, as a matter of law, public nuisance does not extend to the manufacturing or marketing of prescription drugs. About a week later, a jury in a bellwether, the Ohio federal MDL, held that pharmacies caused a public nuisance by failing to respond to curb medically unnecessary prescriptions

What Did Punitive Damages Do? Why Misunderstanding the History of Punitive Damages Matters Today

In 2001 the Supreme Court, in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., suggested that, although modern punitive damages punish, in earlier times they almost exclusively compensated for noneconomic damages that were ignored by a less progressive legal system. This Article demonstrates that the historical foundation upon which the Supreme Court bases its argument is groundless. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries punitive damages served a number of functions, but none of them were to provide the noneconomic damages identified by the court. Instead, as the Article shows, the sort of injuries for which punitive damages were once demanded would still be uncompensated by contemporary doctrines of compensatory damages. This Article uses the Court\u27s confused analysis in Cooper to demonstrate that the dichotomy upon which it relied-that, in the law of punitive damages, punishment and compensation are mutually exclusive categories-is neither historically accurate nor analytically necessary

Reading \u3cem\u3eThe Legal Process\u3c/em\u3e

A Review of Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in eh Making and Application of La

What Did Punitive Damages Do? Why Misunderstanding the History of Punitive Damages Matters Today

In 2001 the Supreme Court, in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. suggested that, although modern punitive damages punish, in earlier times they almost exclusively compensated for noneconomic damages that were ignored by a less progressive legal system. This article demonstrates that the historical foundation upon which the Supreme Court bases its argument is groundless. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries punitive damages served a number of functions, but none of them were to provide the noneconomic damages identified by the court. Instead, as the article shows, the sort of injuries for which punitive damages were once demanded would still be uncompensated by contemporary doctrines of compensatory damages. This article uses the court\u27s confused analysis in Cooper to demonstrate that the dichotomy upon which it relied - that, in the law of punitive damages, punishment and compensation are mutually exclusive categories - is neither historically accurate nor analytically necessary

Werner Herzog and the Aesthetics of the Grotesque

EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL: WERNER HERZOG AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE GROTESQUE IntroductionRarely in modern cinema has a film fully engaged with the ribald grotesquery and carnival aesthetics of bygone theatre and literature. Perhaps, as was the case in the grotesque theatre, audiences are reluctant to identify with characters and plots wrought with fundamental contradictions and mythical intellectuality. It seems that to explore the grotesque in the "modern" cinema, the director must stand outside of mainstream national and ideological consciousness. It is fitting then, that Werner Herzog would fully engage with the grotesque aesthetic and the mystical history it entails. Herzog, the "dreamer of new dreams, teller of new truths, and seeker of new images," working both within and outside of the auspices of the New German Cinema movement, visualizes for his audiences a complex amalgam of history, mythology, and ideology.(1) He, in creating what is best..