Today is the UN’s landmine awareness day. If you don’t know what a land mine is, read the Wikipedia article. The problem is that numerous 3rd world countries have their ground heavily seeded with the things during times of war, which just persist to the current day. Last year ~20,000 people died to land mines. I don’t know if that number includes soldiers.

Creating machines to automatically detect and defuse land mine fields isn’t a hard problem, but just an expensive one.  And, as land mines continue to be used around the world, the problem will persist indefinitely.  We need to be aware of the dangers of landmines and stop making them.  Perhaps if the supply atrophies they will disappear entirely.

2 Responses to “Land Mine Awareness Day”

1. raindrop says:

   4/4/2007 at 3:37 pm

   another reason why no UN country will dare to build and use “machines to automatically detect and defuse land mine fields” is that there IS NO PETROL or any profit what so ever to do so in such countries.

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2. Sickish says:

   4/5/2007 at 11:32 am

   [...] Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been a bit sickish. Meanwhile, check out these articles: land mines, more beach craziness, protect your funds, sponsored traveling, and one dollar a day. Good stuff. [...]

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