From: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org (mad-mission-digest) To: mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Subject: mad-mission-digest V7 #50 Reply-To: mad-mission@smoe.org Sender: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk * If you ever wish to unsubscribe, send an email to * mad-mission-digest-request@smoe.org * with ONLY the word unsubscribe in the body of the email * . * For the latest information on Patty's tour dates, go to: * http://www.pattygriffin.net/PattyInConcert.html * OR * go to http://www.atorecords.com * . * PLEASE :) when you reply to this digest to send a post TO the list, * change the subject to reflect what your post is about. A subject * of Re: mad-mission-digest V7 #___ gives readers no clue * as to what your message is about. * Also, PLEASE do not quote an entire digest when you reply to the * list. Edit out anything you are not referring to. mad-mission-digest Friday, February 21 2003 Volume 07 : Number 050 Today's Subjects: ----------------- MM: Patty Brithday Drive update 2-20-03 ["Booms, Holly" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 16:36:58 -0500 From: "Booms, Holly" Subject: MM: Patty Brithday Drive update 2-20-03 Another big THANK YOU to our latest batch of donors...$195.00 so far! For details on how to donate for Patty's Birthday Drive, see the discussion board posting at: http://www.pattygriffin.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display; num=1044933529 Thanks! your Mad Mission nagger... HOLLY ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 21:30:31 -0500 From: "Don Henn" Subject: MM: NPC - Land mines Rand Urges World focus on Land Mines By Claudia Deane and Richard Morin Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, February 18, 2003; Page A23 It will take nearly half a century to clear all the land mines lying in wait in onetime battlefields around the world unless new technologies are developed to locate and disarm these weapons of personal destruction, according to a new study to be released today by the Rand Corp. The researchers said the mines have claimed 15,000 to 20,000 victims a year in about 90 countries -- including more than 150 children each month in Afghanistan, where mines laid down by the former Soviet Union between 1979 and 1988 remain a potent threat to residents and returning refugees, as well as to U.S. troops. These researchers say the world needs to spend more time and money finding land mines. But what is needed even more, they say, are better tools; mine detectors are primitive and unreliable, at best. "The overwhelming limitation of the conventional process is that the metal detector finds every piece of metal scrap, without providing information about whether the item is indeed a mine," they wrote. "For example, of approximately 200 million items excavated during humanitarian demining in Cambodia between 1992 and 1998, only about 500,000 items [less than 0.3 percent] were anti-personnel mines or other explosive devices." Other existing technologies are better at distinguishing junk from the real goods, but they tend to locate only one or two types of mine while missing others. One promising solution suggested by the Rand-led research team, which included university and government experts: a "multi-sensor system" that combines two or more technologies into a more efficient, less easily fooled device. But that will take money to develop and test; an estimated $60 million would be needed to produce a prototype. "Once the prototype is developed, additional allocations totaling approximately $135 million will be needed to fund the engineering and development of an optimal, deployable system," they wrote. A bit pricey? Hardly, these researchers argue. The United States already spends about $100 million annually in "humanitarian" mine clearing, with decidedly mixed results. ------------------------------ End of mad-mission-digest V7 #50 ********************************