With so many choices from numerous sources, a versatile bakers rack has been a welcome feature in any home that is in dire need of additional counter and cabinet space. But, most people tend to limit the use of a helpful bakers rack to the kitchen or an informal dining room. However, quality-made bakers racks are just as useful in other areas of the home. The only difference is that they tend to be labeled by a different name when used in other rooms, namely: étagère.
Available in a wide range of styles, etageres will fit the décor of any room in which they are placed. The options in the bathroom are virtually limitless. A bathroom with clean white cabinets and wainscoting on the walls is a timeless look that can make soaking in the tub a welcome retreat. While a white étagère with a wine rack may not sound like it belongs in this space, the truth is that it can be used a decorative way to display and store colorful towels and other toiletry necessities. The contrast of color against the crisp white can make a spot of fun in a bathroom while still providing additional storage space for personal effects. If you prefer a bathroom with more warmth and rich colors, consider a natural wood finish to complement existing cabinetry.
A versatile bakers rack can also be used to create an inexpensive patio potting station and thus be used in outdoor areas as well. Stainless steel or iron etageres are perfect for this task. Impervious to the elements, a metal work station outside can provide storage for pots, seeds, tools and potting soil thus saving room in the garage or at the very least eliminating unnecessary messes in the house.
Newer homes have adapted to the busy lifestyle of the modern family by providing a mud room to transition from the outside world into the comfortable retreat of the inner sanctum of the house. For any home without this functional room, an étagère at the front door or main entry can give you a place to organize personal belongings without stringing them through the house. Having coats, bags, shoes, and other belongings in one place can save time getting out the door in the morning. Time is of the essence, and spending less time preparing to leave can give you more time to enjoy the journey and the destination.
Effective use of space is important to the success of any design. Thinking outside the box when decorate your home can open your eyes to a completely different realm of possibilities. Finding functional pieces that work in a combination of spaces and provide additional storage can be priceless. Etageres may be the furniture pieces with the funny name but they can be invaluable additions to your home that provide much-needed storage space and organization to the home décor.
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Make Good Use Of Space With a Bakers Rack
CHI Rocket Hair Dryer – A Review
CHI hair dryers are priced at the high-end of styling tools, right along side other blow dryers like Elchim, T3 and Solano. But, does the CHI Rocket blow dryer offer the same technology, functionality and styling performance of the other manufacturers? Overall, I think it does, however, there are one or two areas, I think, could be improved.
CHI makes a number of blow dryer models, but a popular choice for many is the Rocket Professional. It’s priced at well over a hundred dollars so it’s not for those on a budget or who simply can’t justify spending that much on a styling tool. However, if you are prepared to spend that much, you can rest assured that this tool comes with a lot of great features.
The motor is pretty large; 1800 watts. There are two heat settings and two speed settings and there’s also a cool shot button – you press it once for on and once for off, you don’t have to keep it pressed down when using.
The appliance generates negative ions (great for getting frizz-free, shiny hair) and has an extremely low EMF (Electro Magnetic Frequency) which cuts down on static. There’s even a little indicator on the side to let you know when it’s producing infrared and ionic heat.
Finally, you get both a concentrator nozzle and a comb attachment.
All in all, this is a very good hair tool and, when used correctly, does produce, silky, shiny, smooth hair that looks like it was professionally styled in a salon – indeed, many top stylists use a CHI Rocket dryer.
However, there are a couple of issues with this tool.
The first is that with its high price tag it would have been nice to see some tourmaline being used on some of its components. Tourmaline produces even more negative ions than does ceramic and many of the best hair dryers like the T3 Evolution use it.
But a more important issue – at least this seems to be expressed in many reviews – is that the Rocket does operate at a very high temperature – too high for some. If you need a lot of heat to get your hair in shape, then you’ll be pleased with the Rocket, however, if you don’t like high heat, then you might be advised to look at another brand.
Apart from these two points, it really is hard to find fault with the CHI Rocket Professional Hair Dryer. When compared to other brands that are in the same price category it definitely matches most on technology, functionality and hair styling results.
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Custom Theme Beds Make the Best Indoor Playhouse Structures
As much as you and your child both may wish it were otherwise, outdoor play is not always feasible. But whether it’s because no adults are available to supervise or the house simply has no area suitable for playing, indoor play may not be very feasible either. Fortunately, all it takes is a bit of creative ingenuity to turn any typical child’s bed into an indoor playhouse structure that is equally functional as both a sleeping space and a play space.
Replace your Child’s Bed with a Custom Theme Bed
A bed is just a bed, but a custom theme bed can be anything your child imagines it to be. With multiple and multiple areas or sections, a custom theme bed can serve both of those needs – sleeping and playing – not to mention a whole lot more! (Storage, anyone?)
A simple delineation of spaces with a custom theme bed could be to have the sleeping area on the ground floor level of the structure and the playing area on the upper level. Or, if your child is attracted to loft beds, you can reverse that and have the sleeping area be the upper level with an open play space beneath it.
Either way you choose to set it up, a custom theme bed inspires creative, imaginative play, not merely by providing extra room in which play can happen, but by designing the look and feel of the structure around your child’s personality and interests. A child who likes “things that go” can have a custom truck bed, a custom sports car bed, a custom airplane bed, a custom train bed, a custom rocket ship bed, a custom pirate ship bed, or a custom submarine bed – to name just a few. On the other hand, a child who loves storybooks and fairy tales could chose from a custom castle bed, a custom horse-and-carriage bed, a custom cottage bed, a custom Tudor-style mansion bed, or a custom tree house bed. The options are as boundless as your child’s imagination.
Clean-Up is Part of Playtime
As every parent knows (and most children seem to continually forget), an important part of playtime comes at the end, when it’s time to clean up the mess they just made. No amount of interior design magic is likely to make a child any less resistant to cleaning up, but a custom theme bed at least makes it both easy and fun: easy because you can have toy boxes, dresser drawers, and shelving units built into the custom play structure itself (saving space in the child’s bedroom even further), and fun because as part of the playhouse structure, your child could find ways to incorporate cleaning up into the fantasy realm they just created.
Is there any better way to manage a child’s typically rampant energy level than by giving them a play space they can immerse themselves in as soon as they awaken and put themselves down for a nap in as soon as they tucker themselves out? Probably not.
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Main Street – Urban Renewal Offers Community Wide Window Dressing
Living in Lamar, Colorado, at the heart of America, pedestrians expect a certain level of hometown comfort and nostalgia. Why wouldn’t they? The media purports gangly cowboys and rough shod horses still roam the dirt streets so, wouldn’t gallery style boardwalk shops be part of the picture? And yet, the metal façade structures resembling 1960’s heritage don’t quite measure up.
Living in a Star Trek world with Father knows best ideology brings greater problems to the forefront. How can hometown America, the heartland central of the United States, more closely resemble a space station at warp speed than a community along the Arkansas River with pedestrian traffic and kids begging for ice cream on Main Street? Isn’t there a balance in the design somewhere?
One of the most significant and long lasting stores along the main drag, offers pine log furniture in the window with a high-tech building exterior. Nice combination, the contrasts are remarkable. But people don’t want to see Star Trek technology in a town most often referred to as Cowtown. Getting back to the future, in these days of everlasting historical value, means moving back to the simpler times with classic storefronts, hometown atmosphere, and glory-days comfort.
The average American tourist wants the hometown advantage as they cross the country. Sarsaparilla in the coffee shop on Main Street works if the bartender has a feather in his well worn felt hat and a gun holster. If the gun will light a candle, so much the better.
So how can you dress the windows in an Urban Renewal event and bring Community Wide Progress to your own community?
1. Warm up the colors of your downtown shop fronts.
2. Update the windows frequently and dress them for the holidays.
3. Make sure your store front is inviting and lively.
4. Put up a sign above your doorway that can be read from the sidewalk.
5. Move a display out onto the sidewalk, include something from inside to make it more important that the sidewalk shopper enter your store.
Do you want to learn more about window dressing for your community?
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NASA similar to other Military branches?
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Rocket Spanish Review – Is Rocket Spanish Really Any Good?
Melitta One Cup Coffee Maker
Instead of purchasing your cup of coffee in a cafe, use single serve coffee brewers like the Melitta One Cup Coffee Maker to make your own cup of coffee from the convenience of your own home.
This is a good investment because not only will it save you a lot of your time, it will also give you big savings.
The Melitta One Cup Coffee Maker is one of the first coffee pod brewers introduced in the United States. This brewer has been redesigned to have a more modern look (it now resembles a rocket ship) and aside from making an excellent coffee brew, it can also brew tea.
There are two variants of the new Melitta One Cup Coffee brewer available: the MES5B and MES2R.
Despite the coffee maker being loaded with features, brewing coffee with it is as easy as 1-2-3. It is a one pod brewing system that allows the user to brew directly into one or two coffee cups.
Its brew chamber can accommodate single serve and double serve coffee pod holders. You can choose your brew size from the 5, 8, and 14 oz range available.
Most coffee connoisseurs recommend setting to the 5oz for a strong cup and 8oz size for a regular cup of coffee. Another added element is the auto shut-off after brewing feature so there is no need for the user to worry about the coffee brewing when he leaves the coffee machine while it is still in the brewing process.
Brewing time takes about 45 to 60 seconds and the brew temperature is consistent between 185 to 195F. One notable difference and improvement from the original version is that the new Melitta one now has a universal pod holder that accepts other pod sizes, including the 62mm pod.
Previously, the Melitta One only accepted their own brand java pods. Now, it can be paired with premium coffee blends such as those from Green Mountain coffee, she will unfailingly produce rich, flavorful coffee one cup at a time.
The best thing about this machine is the fact that it is so affordable, with a retail price ranging from $35-45 for MES2R and $50 for the MES5B.
With that price to beat, you would be crazy to choose any other machines coffee in the market and not to make her a staple in your home kitchen. It also comes in a variety of colors – red, white, and black – to match your home kitchen decor.
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What did NASA do in space between Apollo 17 (the last flight) to the moon and?
I know there was Sky lab but was there more? was that all we did?
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Old Dogs, Fat Cats and Generational Lies
Old dogs tend to sleep in the middle of the road, move slowly and don’t bark as quickly as they once did at the first sign of danger. As they begin to age it is not their lifetime of loyalty that keeps them alive until the last possible moment, it is ours. Anyone with an ounce of humanity will wait until all hope is lost before putting down an old and faithful dog.
In a world of ‘change’ where history is re-written and loyalty doesn’t count for much as in days gone by, we can vote down an old trusted dog and pick up an all new pup who’s antics and irrepressible new behaviors delight us and become our newest spectacle and distraction. But with all pups the problem is they don’t know an enemy from a friend and they don’t know how you run your house. They chew on your best possessions, disregard your space and leave nasty surprises in places where you are bound to set your feet.
Perhaps this analogy has gone far enough but it is hard not to mention that the media made more ado about the lengthy process the Obama’s made about which kind of dog that would share the White House, than it did about the nature and background of the new pup that would hold both the White House and the country in its sway for the next four years. Some of them (birthers) are still waiting for the papers (birth certificate and other records) to prove his pedigree. The result is a lot of people are dreaming back to the days when they had Old Shep underfoot and times were simpler.
Some are looking forward to a stronger figure to guide the household and clean up the messes of the trial pup. They are willing to consider a time when patriarchal rule could give way to matriarchal rule and a motherly approach to guarding and running the house might look a lot better. The phenomenal new interest in Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann seems only appropriate and may be the only way to straighten out a house that is torn up and has become hardly recognizable.
Moving on from old dogs to fat cats is where I have to pause for the usual disclaimer all journalists now have to use in the new PC world of “can’t criticize the new Prez.” How quickly we forget that the new Prez wasted no time to criticize all that America ever was and is today and that before the entire world on his recent global excursions.
In what is now being called the top most un-presidential blurb ever made by Mr. Obama, he called corporation executives who get huge bonuses for cranking up their companies revenues ‘fat cats.’ The average Joe running on the natural wisdom of the street might think that the President’s remarks are fully appropriate but as a minister of the gospel the challenge was to see if the Bible had anything to say about it. It turns out that this was easier than I thought.
In the twentieth chapter of Matthew’s gospel is a parable or an elaborate story of a vineyard owner who is hard pressed to get his crop in before it is too late. He goes to the market place in town and hires as many workers as he can. As the day moves on he realizes he doesn’t have enough workers to pull the entire crop in before sunset so in the last hours of daylight he rushes to town to hire more workers.
At the end of a successful day of harvesting the vineyard owner pays off the workers. To the surprise of all, he pays them all exactly the same wages. Those who came in at the last hour were paid the same wages as those who worked all day long. Those who bore the heat of the day were irate and they complained.
The owner gives them his answer and while they might not have liked his explanation they could not argue against it. It is that same argument that works for CEOs who get bonuses whether we like it or not. The owner said “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” (Mt 20:15)
In a free enterprise system where corporations decide to set incentives, as long as no government bailout money is being used the same rule applies. It is their money to do with as they see fit. Why this administration is so bothered by that is even harder to explain because the money this big government is giving away in stimulus and entitlements isn’t even theirs, it is yours!
Even as we reel to the insults laid on the corporate kings at home we see our President tripping across the globe bowing to kings, decrying America’s arrogance, picking up unearned peace prizes and last but not least signing on to the worlds latest new supposed life threatening phobia, global warming.
Leaked emails that indicate a cover up or a shutting out of dissenting voices, input from thousands of scientists who say it isn’t so and a scientific model used for development of the Kyoto Protocol for determining this latest panic has been totally debunked, yet all of this can’t seem to slow down the fearful. Political scientists who have not yet sold their soul to the hula hoop rage of the century say it is only a means to gain control.
For those theologically well versed global warming is the third in an offering of world changing generational lies to be offered to the unsuspecting.
The theology of generational lies is derived from a far more controversial theology called the generational curse, which is derived from the Ten Commandments as found in Exodus 20:5 which declare that God will judge a people for their persistence in sin if it is carried through to three or four full generations. Although it is clear that no one is being called out for the sins of their fathers it is only the fact that they are carrying on the same sins or worse that gets them into trouble.
All generational curses are created by generational lies. We hear them all the time in words like, it’s OK it’s the 90s or ‘everyone’s doing it.” The more sophisticated lies are syndicated by modern secularist education, re-written history and suspect science. To resist the PC lies of today’s world makes the peer pressure of high school days look easy.
The first two offerings that have been almost completely swallowed hook, line and sinker by this generation have wreaked havoc with the single most important aspect of the Bibles total address to the world which is accountability.
If your God is the Big Bang then you need never answer to a creator God. Growing arguments contrary to the evolutionary model are being squashed and not heard at all. Creation scientists are labeled as kooks and summarily dismissed out of hand. Some of the arguments against the newly discovered facts in creation science are sounding ever more politically driven by the day. The politics of science is a caricature of real and unconstrained scientific inquiry that should be limited to comic books, but it is not.
We are willing to tell our young students struggling in university the amazing recent discovery that DNA is the blue print of all life. It is the greatest storage system of information ever discovered and although it is so small the information contained in a pin head could fill volumes of books that would reach to the moon five times.
Then we presume to tell the same eager students that all of this info came about by means of a lightning strike to a puddle of mud followed some changes and self engineered modifications that only took about four billion years. Presto! Here stands Homo erectus and tens of thousands of species of animals, plants and insects.
We hope they won’t discuss this amazing bit of didactic reasoning with a dorm mate who may be studying mathematics, else they might be reminded that the odds of picking only six single numbers to win the lottery are about 20 million to one. The very idea that all the information in DNA could produce even one living creature by random chance would come down in odds that the greatest computers could not equate without crashing.
This is but one example of dismissing intelligent design with an argument that has no more intelligence than a comic book episode of Batman or the Green Lantern. Not seen as easily is the real dismissal accomplished in our persistence in this fairy tale which is the removal of accountability. While we ascribe to the misguided notion that the God of this world, (Satan) if he exists, has powers that are limited to parlor tricks for poor mislead Satan worshippers, he has pulled the wool over the eyes of an entirely unsuspecting generation. This is an example of the highest kind of generational lie.
The second greatest generational lie to quash accountability in this generation is the promise of interstellar space exploration. Mans meager top speed of 30,000 mph in space travel so far should be warning enough, but the one area that may actually be larger than space itself still remains, the imagination of man.
Estimates say there are a billion trillion stars stretching across a universe that would take trillions of human lifetimes to reach providing we could bring our speeds closer to the speed of light. Nothing in the known physical universe except light can reach the speed of light except those rocket ships also created in the comics. I won’t get lengthy here but suffice it to say, what man runs out of first will never be space but rather it is time. Here too is the key to the Bible message of accountability. The Bible agrees completely with these findings. It declares that man has a specified time to do all he is going to do. That time is clearly declared to be one life time per person, no more and no less.
In fact the Bible declares that man will be judged not for the space he has managed to travel through but only the time and how he handled himself in that time. To wit, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (Heb 9:27) No stopovers on M Class planets are in man’s future.
With accountability knocked out of both ends of the human equation, didn’t come from God, not going to God, civilization has become reckless. Strange behaviors, horrible crimes, civil unrest and near pandemonium has erupted in various places across the globe. What seems to be missing in the shiny new secular society is the absence of a cause. Enter the all new global cause known as global warming.
Now there is a banner under which to march, a chance to concert our effort to attack this giant life threatening, menacing dragon even if it turns out to be only a harmless windmill humbly harnessing the wind to grind the corn of the field. All that’s needed now is a Don Quixote kind of leader to show us the way to slay this gruesome and deadly windmill. Here is where the final generational lie comes into play.
It will take yet one more generational lie to bring the matter to a head. Just as some 167 biblical prophecies given over a period of 4,000 years predicted the coming of the Savior including the where’s and when’s, the manner of life and his manner of death the same book declares in no uncertain terms the coming of another called, the Antichrist.
Here is the final generational lie. Here will be a man to pull it all together. He will be endowed by the god of this world with all the available wisdom this world has to offer and will be a charming political and military genius that will make Hitler look like a choir boy by comparison. He will embody all the lies gone before to persuade an entire generation to follow him to its final test. He will claim to know God for a while until he is completely in power after which the only god he allows to be worshipped is himself.
He will promise man that space is there for the taking and will offer worldwide solutions to combat the inevitability of self destruction if we don’t deal with the great evil of our own carbon footprint. In the end the only footprint to be seen will be the heel of his boot on the neck of an unsuspecting generation that has fully accepted the fourth and last generational lie.
These portents needn’t be feared by the faithful to the gospel and those who still believe in the American dream of freedom, democracy and free enterprise. If we let the proclivity to see only a bluebird on our shoulder and nebulous undefined change dismiss all that America ever was like an old dog that has outlived its usefulness it would mean that we’ve believed the generational lie. This will not result in just another fine zip-a-dee doo dah day.
It will take more than nostalgia for Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine to pull this nation back up to its special place in the world. What it will actually take is a serious return to the call of the words spoken by the Lord to the Israelites who had just completed the building of Solomon’s Temple that by today’s standards would cost some forty six billion dollars to construct.
God never mentioned the solid golden vessels or the elaborate works of gold and silver that adorned almost every inch of this great palace of worship. He addressed only the hearts and minds of those who stood by for the commissioning of this marvelous piece of ancient architecture. Here is what he said then, here is what he says now.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2Ch 7:14)
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The Law of Post-Atmospheric Alien Encounters by National and International Organizations
How would international law treat the hypothetical case of a national space shuttle mission encountering an alien race? To begin with, I should probably instead use the word “extraterrestrial” rather than “alien,” as alien is already a well established legal term of art. So this is not the law of foreigners in a state’s territory, but rather the law of contact with intelligent non-human entities that did not originate from earth.
What if First Contact happened tomorrow? How would humans react, and how would the law apply? Assuming the aliens didn’t immediately blast us out of existence, that is. I think it’s safe to say each state would want to have its own say in how things with the aliens go down, and that states would have their own individual opinions and conflicting agendas regarding the encounter. Which means, inevitably, they would each take whatever actions they deemed appropriate and then afterwords seek to justify those actions on the basis of contorted interpretations of international law. The United Nations would also want to establish a central role for itself in the fray, and because it does possess the institutional mechanisms that states tend to follow when seeking to take multinational action, the UN would likely emerge as the primary vehicle through which multilateral discussions and actions would take place.
So international law would be the natural language for states to use when framing these discussions. In this first installment, I am going to examine how international law in its current form would govern an encounter in outer space between extraterrestrials and a national or international body. Later articles will consider outer space encounters between aliens and private parties, and encounters with aliens on earth.
Space law, although relatively new and still developing, is an established body of law governing human activities beyond the atmosphere. Although the current body of space law lacks any provisions directly regulating potential alien contacts, the laws contained within the various space treaties would by their language pertain to such an encounter.
The most relevant document is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (”OST”). Other international space agreements are less important, as they either concern situations that would inevitably be of solely human concern, or else are only signed by nations that do not possess the ability to enter space and are therefore irrelevant. Also, the OST is like to be enforce whenever a state encounters aliens in space, as under Article XVI, withdrawal from the treaty will not be effective for one year. Thus, assuming we don’t get much advanced warning that our alien neighbors are dropping by, any spacefaring nation that has contact with an alien will not have had time to drop out of it. Moreover, at this point in time, OST may well embody customary international law, and thus be binding on all nations regardless of their ratification status.
Some basic legal stipulations conferred by the OST are that the space activities conducted by parties to the OST are governed by international law (Article III), and that nothing beyond the earth’s atmosphere is subject to “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty.” (Article II). So at the outset, we do know international law is in fact the governing body of law regarding alien-state relations, and that states are prohibited from immediately enslaving any alien races they encounter.
Let’s establish a hypothetical scenario: Canada has set up a manned space station in orbit around the moon. Aliens have arrived, and for reasons beyond human ken, have chosen to make first contact with the Canadian ship. The alien envoys thereafter board the Canadian vessel to enter into negotiations with Canadian diplomats that have been sent up to join them.
As an initial matter, Canada would be required to inform the rest of the world of the alien contact, and would be in breach of its treaty obligations if it attempted to keep the contact secret. Under Article XI of the OST, Canada has an obligation “to inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations as well as the public and the international scientific community, to the greatest extent feasible and practicable, of the nature, conduct, locations and results of [outer space] activities.” Therefore, not only must all other nations be made aware of the aliens, no secret Men In Black type arrangements can legally take place either; the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence must be announced to the world. Even if all the states wanted to make it a government secret, the scientific community also has a right to be informed.
Secondly, Canada would be required to allow other nations to have access to the Canadian space vessel that the aliens are on board — although Canada can get away with not granting that access immediately. Under international law, if the aliens should choose to board the space station of a single nation or a station collectively owned by a subset of nations, the owning nation(s) will not be allowed to exclude other countries from the Interstellar Negotiations. This is because Article XII provides that, “All stations, installations, equipment and space vehicles on the moon and other celestial bodies shall be open to representatives of other State Parties to the Treaty on the basis of reciprocity.” However, any country wishing to visit “shall give reasonable advance notice of a projected visit, in order that appropriate consultations may be held and that maximum precautions may be taken to assure safety and to avoid interference with normal operations in the facility to be visited.” This language give lots of room for stalling — consultations, plus ‘maximum’ precautions,’ plus ‘avoiding interferences with operations’ means that Canada could easily delay such visits for a lengthy time indeed. But, eventually, other countries must be allowed to visit with the aliens.
What if other nations fear that Canada is doing a horrible job at negotiations with the aliens, and worry that Canada’s bungling of it will drive the aliens into declaring a space jihad on Earth? Under Article IX,
A State Party to the Treaty which has reason to believe that an activity or experiment planned by another State Party in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, would cause potentially harmful interference with activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, may request consultation concerning the activity or experiment.
So essentially, if, say, Barbados, gets worried that Canada’s dealings with extraterrestrials might cause “potentially harmful interference with activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space” (potentially starting an intergalactic war with a race of super advanced aliens would probably qualify), Barbados can take the proactive step of… requesting a consultation.
Of course, if this didn’t work, Barbados could always bring a case against Canada before the ICJ, arguing that Canada is violating its obligation “to conduct all their activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.”
But that would take at least a few years, and by then we’d all probably be slaves to the Alien Overlord. So under Article XIII, any “practical question arising in connection with the exploration of outer space” is to be decided by members to the OST among each other or with the appropriate international organization. To answer a practical legal question like “Does Canada have to let other nations talk to the aliens?”, we could consult with COPUOS. The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space was established by G.A. Resolution 1472 (XIV), and gives COPUOS authority “to study the nature of legal problems which may arise from the exploration of outer space[.]” So it looks like UNCOPUOS is going to be our new law firm for all legal disputes concerning aliens.
Now, assume the aliens are well-meaning, but clumsy, and while all the debates over international law are going on, the aliens accidentally explode the Canadian space station. What recourses does Canada have?
If a visiting alien’s spacecraft accidentally injured an Earth vessel, or other earth-owned property, the injured owner may be able to bring suit against the alien by means of a Claim Commission on earth. Canada should consider using this remedy. Assuming the injury took place in our solar system, I believe a strong argument could be made that the damage should be governed by earth law, as torts are generally governed by the law of the location where they took place. Under lex loci delicti, for an injury in space the applicable law would be the Convention on Liability For Damage Caused by Space Objects. The Liability Convention mandates,
“In the event of damage being caused elsewhere than on the surface of the Earth to a space object of one launching State or to persons or property on board such a space object by a space object of another launching State, the latter shall be liable only if the damage is due to its fault or the fault of persons for whom it is responsible.”
So assuming it was the aliens and not the Canadians that were negligent, this might provide the basis of a claim. Although an alien would presumably not be a member of the treaty, if the Liability Convention represents an embodiment of customary international law, it can be argued that, as CIL, it is applicable to a state even absent its consent. Just as CIL is applicable to newly formed nations whose existence postdates the establishment of a CIL norm, if an alien empire were to enter Earth jurisdiction, it too would be bound by CIL, despite the fact it never signed it. Therefore, the alien would have to compensate Canada for the loss of its space station. (If I were the type to make bad jokes, I would now make a reference to the possibility of the Liability Convention being the new ‘alien tort statute.’)
Finally, it may be premature to be concerned about Canada falsely attempting to claim a role as Earth’s mouthpiece. Presumably, any alien civilization capable of traveling between stars would have a sophisticated legal system, and would thus realize that Canada is not the proper Earth channel which planetary diplomacy should occur through. In which case, our alien visitors might consider all nations’ astronauts, not any single state government, to be the appropriate envoys for Earth. Under Article IV of OST, astronauts have been declared by the earth nations to be the “envoys of mankind” — which theoretically means they trump any individual nation in their right to be at the negotiation table with visiting alien dignitaries. So astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts might be Earth’s diplomats for purposes of interstellar or intergalactic law.
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