Posts Tagged ‘Lubbock’
Let’s hear it, again, for 2nd Amendment freedom!
An Albuquerque gas balloon pilot says someone fired shots at the balloon he was in during the America’s Challenge Gas Balloon Race.
Albuquerque pilot Troy Bradley and co-pilot Shane Robinson took off to cheers from Balloon Fiesta Park over the weekend. But while flying north of Lubbock, Texas around sunset Saturday night, Bradley says someone started shooting at them. He says the balloon was just 400 feet off the ground above a cornfield.
Robinson started scanning the ground with binoculars.
Bradley says, “He could see a truck out there. And he actually could see the gun pointed at us. And then another shot went and he could see the flash from the gun barrel…”
Because the winds weren’t very strong the balloon wasn’t able to fly away. Robinson called 911 from the balloon. From the air the pair led deputies to some men in the truck. He says they were arrested and the gun was confiscated…
He says he has no idea why someone would shoot at them.
“Because they were there” is usually sufficient reason in the dimwitted minds of idiots who do things like this.
Why did I nudge the 2nd Amendment freaks with the headline? Because there are stronger requirements for driving a car or joining the army than there are for gun purchases.
The idiot on the ground is patently someone who shouldn’t be allowed to have one.
Texas judge says backers of Republican Presidents don’t get arrested
A Lubbock County judge who posted arrest photos of nine people — seven of them black — wearing Barack Obama T-shirts on a courthouse bulletin board has apologized to those who were offended by the racial tone of the display.
Judge Tom Head sent a statement to The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in which he said he “never meant any racial disrespect.”
With the photos were printouts critical of Obama supporters and suggesting that backers of former Republican presidents generally do not get arrested.
County Commissioner Bill McCay removed the judge’s display.
He is right, you know. He didn’t say Republicans aren’t crooked. He just said they don’t get arrested.
Cotton burr bests commonly-used erosion control mulches
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) agricultural engineer Greg Holt helped develop the erosion control industry’s first cotton hydromulch “spray-on blanket.” Holt is at the ARS Cotton Production and Processing Research Unit in Lubbock, Texas.
Hydromulch is the bright-green mulch used in spray-on slurries that cover bare lands at construction sites and roadside projects, to prevent erosion until vegetation can be established. In the past, hydromulches were made mostly from wood and paper byproducts.
GeoSkin® Cotton Hydromulch is made from cotton gin byproducts. It is a combination hydromulch/spray-on erosion-control blanket that performs better than conventional roll-on blankets and requires significantly less labor. Holt and colleagues tested the prototype against commercial erosion control blankets made of straw, wood and coconut.
The total runoff from these four mulches, including soil and mulch ingredients, was: cotton, 222 pounds per acre; straw, 7,832 pounds per acre; wood, 7,474 pounds per acre; and coconut, 3,719 pounds per acre.
One of Holt’s studies showed that cotton-based hydromulches established a good stand of grass, compared to other hydromulches and a straw blanket which didn’t do as well.
No doubt you won’t find this the most exciting post ever at my site. Or any other. But, hydromulch is one of those topics fascinating to anyone ever involved with large-scale construction projects. I’m retired, now – but, this stuff still trips my trigger.
If there’s anything the Lubbock area can research, of course, it’s cotton. They have too damned much of it, now – virtually all produced to the detriment to the overall ecology and environment. Still, it’s nice to see some of the leftover crap – I presume they’re mostly dealing with what is called cotton burr – take another step forward for complete use of agricultural byproducts.
We use cotton burr mulch BTW around just about every garden plant and tree on our property. Good stuff.
Call to exonerate man for rape conviction – years after his death
The family of Timothy Cole, a Texas man who died in prison nearly a decade ago while serving a sentence for a rape he swore he did not commit, is hoping a court will issue the state’s first posthumous exoneration.
Cole was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1985 rape of 20-year-old Michele Mallin. He maintained his innocence, but it was not confirmed by DNA until years after his 1999 death, when another inmate confessed to the rape…
The court hearing on the exoneration began Thursday afternoon, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
Mallin, who has spoken publicly about the case, will join Cole’s family in the Austin, Texas, courtroom. They want a judge to clear Cole’s name, according to the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help the wrongfully convicted.
Among those expected to testify are Mallin and Jerry Wayne Johnson, her confessed rapist…
The Innocence Project became involved after Cole’s family received Johnson’s letter of confession. DNA tests confirmed that Johnson was Mallin’s attacker. Now, Cole’s family hopes the court hearing will be the final step in clearing his name.
Mallin is helping them. “I’m trying to get his name cleared. It’s the right thing to do.”
Having some experience with Texas law and politics, the exoneration can’t be counted on as a gimme – regardless of evidence and circumstances. Texas law and Texas politicians feel they do no wrong.
Johnson spent 12 years trying to confess to the rape and got nowhere. It wasn’t until a group like the Innocence Project got involved and started to embarrass the state that new DNA evidence and the confession were even allowed into consideration.
UPDATE: Can’t tell you all how glad I am to be wrong. My cynical self is pleased to learn that court in Texas has exonerated Timothy Cole. Friday 6th February.
