Photo by Groovehouse

Houston... where the quarterback's mistakes being merely crippling (as opposed to fatal) net you a two game improvement.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, a collective group effort whose results are ultimately indicative of the time, effort, and most of all, capability of those doing the raising.

The same can be said of a 2-14 NFL season. It takes a village to go 2-14. A village of injuries, comedically egregious mistakes, and general under-performance and suckitude. Now, to be clear, not everyone did "his part" in order to drag the Texans into the bottom of the NFL abyss. J.J. Watt had the greatest season ever for a 3-4 defensive end (topping the standard set his previous season), Chris Myers was one of the top five or six centers in football, and somehow Andre Johnson still found a way to put up over 1,400 yards receiving.

But generally speaking, everyone else was pulling the rope in the completely opposite direction of where this team was thought to be headed at the beginning of the season, especially after a 2-0 start.

So now, nine games in, the team appears to be better. Their record actually is better. So where has the improvement come from? Who, of the Texans' 2014 core, is better in 2014?

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Mad House Photography via Flickr

Stealing one gun from an officer is probably risky business, considering the potential consequences that could arise from such a deed.

Still, crooks on the North side of Houston took that risky gun-thieving business to the extreme Tuesday night when they stole a bunch of shotguns from a police officer's vehicle.

Thieves broke out the back window of an HPD officer's city-issued pickup truck Tuesday night and stole 10 HPD-issued Remington shotguns that were inside, according to reports.

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Uber

New rules that will allow ride-share drivers to pick up and drop off passengers at Houston airports were rather quietly approved by City Council Wednesday.

Under the new rules, which saw no discussion from council members yesterday, ride-share drivers can pick you up and drop you off at Houston's airport if they get the right airport-specific permit. They will also be required to pay the same fees taxi drivers are charged, which amounts to about $2.75 for each departing ride at Bush Intercontinental and $1.25 at Hobby.

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Photo from Library of Congress

Basically, the Weather Channel is wary of Galveston because of stuff like this -- and this is just a sample of the destruction from the 1900 hurricane.

Somewhere in Galveston County, officials must be smacking their foreheads in exasperation over the latest bit with Galveston. Namely, the Weather Channel's recently-compiled list of the 50 worst places to own a home based on natural factors. Galveston made it into the top 10, ranking eighth on the list.

This may come as a surprise to those with short memories, but it can't be much of a shock to those who, well, know anything at all about the history, both recent and long past, of Galveston. Basically, despite the best efforts of many people to make Galveston into something important -- a center for trade, the constant New Orleans-style Mardi Gras of the Texas Coast, whatever -- nature has always stepped in and smacked such aspirations down so hard it almost slapped Galveston back in time.

Way back when in 1900, Galveston was the "Octopus of the Gulf" (because it was a huge commercial port and a remarkably prosperous area) and it looked like things were only going to get better for those living there. It was even thought that Galveston would win a contest to get a deep water port, permanently turning Houston into an overlooked little sister of a city.

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Scott Panetti has been in that will-they-or-won't they execution limbo for about a decade.

However, by this time next month, Panetti will be dead, unless someone -- Gov. Rick Perry with a stay of execution or the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles with a commutation -- steps in. That's what a variety of people and organizations, including Christian evangelicals, the American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association and a whole bunch of legal experts and lawyers are requesting so that it can at least be determined whether Panetti, a diagnosed schizophrenic who has been documented with mental illness for more than 30 years, is mentally competent enough for execution. The clemency petition was filed Wednesday.

He's scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2014, the final punishment for the murders of Joe Alvarado and Amanda Alvarado, his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County. The thing is Panetti has suffered from mental illness for more than 30 years. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic in 1978 and was in and out of mental hospitals years before he committed the murders, and he didn't exactly get less erratic after.

"I'm sure there are people that say, 'Why do we care about this?' But when you run a criminal justice system and you're punishing people, it's important for people to understand why they're being punished. That becomes particularly complicated with the mentally ill," Kathryn Kase, a lawyer representing Panetti through the Texas Defender Service, says.

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We are three weeks into the brave, new world of not only having a road to a College Football Playoff, but having some degree of transparency on that road, and let me say that I've generally enjoyed the weekly release of rankings for the playoffs so far.

It's given our radio show some decent Wednesday content, it's helped better set up the next weekend's action in college football, and from purely a logic standpoint, I think the committee has actually done a decent job of ranking teams. (It's amazing what happens when you have voters that watch all the games and actually have logical discourse amongst each other about the games, as opposed to head coaches who have their SID's fill out the ballots blindly.)

The only truly bad thing the rankings have spawned is the inane segments of debate on ESPN over things like "Should Alabama or Arizona State be number 5?? DISCUSS!!!" There are so many contrived talking points on these shows that get trumped by mere math. Such as...where Alabama ranks right now is not really relevant since, if they win out, they're in, and if they lose again, they're (likely) out. Who cares if they're 4, 5, or 6 on November 11?

Television cares, I guess. Content is king. Even bad content, it would appear.

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A female student at Bellaire High School told authorities she was sexually assaulted by a group of males on campus last month, according to a report from the Houston Independent School District police department.

The girl, who has not been identified, was attacked on October 13 by a group of unknown males in the restroom of the science wing at Bellaire High School, according to reports.

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See if you can follow this one.

A Harris County Precinct 4 deputy constable out on patrol says he saw a young man blow through a stop sign on September 10, 2011 near his far north-side home, so he pulled up behind the guy and flashed the lights when the man turned into his driveway. The man's mother walked outside, asked what was going on, and the deputy told her to get back inside the house or else he'd throw her in a squad car; she refused, arguing that she was on her property, so the deputy put her in cuffs.

The rest of the family then came out to investigate and, for some still-unclear reason, things quickly spun out of control. The deputy called for backup. The driver's father was slammed to the ground, cuffed, arrested, and later charged with assaulting a police officer. Deputies grabbed and arrested an aunt with enough force that she suffered a broken hand, according to a lawsuit that was later filed. The sister, who tried to record all of this on her cell phone, was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer; the sister says the cop tripped during the course of her arrest, while her criminal complaint says she pulled her arm while the officer was trying to detain her "causing him to hurt his foot."

As for the man who ran the stop sign, three deputies wrestled him to the ground, and he was later charged with criminal mischief.

After nearly two years and thousands of dollars in legal fees, prosecutors had dropped all charges against David Scherz, who was 25 at the time of his arrest, and his family members who came out to see why a deputy followed him into their driveway. The family filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging police brutality, and a dash-cam video soon surfaced showing then-deputy constable Jimmy Drummond kicking and kneeing Scherz while he was already cuffed and face-down on the ground. The video was enough to prompt the Harris County District Attorney's office to rush to charge Drummond with official oppression the day before the statute of limitations was set to lapse.

But this week, Drummond got off on an apparent technicality. State District Judge Denise Collins ruled that prosecutors didn't properly charge Drummond before the time limit, effectively ending the case just as it was set to go to trial.

The Scherz family, meanwhile, hasn't had such luck over at the courthouse. Scherz's mother and father are again fighting criminal charges that prosecutors dismissed two years ago but then refiled after the family sued in federal court last year (so no statute-of-limitations problem there).

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Photo by Susan Du

Earnest Gibson III, former CEO of Riverside General Hospital, is in the process of appealing his conviction.

It's been two years since FBI agents burst into the Third Ward office of Riverside General Hospital's longtime CEO, Earnest Gibson III, and accused him conspiring to scam Medicare and Medicaid out of $158 million. Judge Lee Rosenthal ordered Gibson not to discuss Riverside business or speak to Riverside colleagues, so his side of the story went unheard. But since a jury convicted him on October 20, he's now filing a motion for a new trial and firmly maintaining his innocence as he awaits sentencing.

Federal prosecutors accused Gibson and others of paying illegal kickbacks to group homes owners to send their patients to Riverside so Riverside could then bill the government for medical services they it never intended to deliver. The hospital claimed to employ marketers who were really acting as patient bounty hunters, prosecutors said.

"The former president of Riverside Hospital, his son, and their co-conspirators systematically defrauded Medicare, treating mentally ill and disabled Americans like chits to be traded and cashed out to pad their own pockets," said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell in a statement. "For over six years, the Gibsons and their co-conspirator stuck taxpayers with millions in hospital bills, purportedly for intensive psychiatric treatment. But the 'treatment' was a sham - some patients just watched television all day."

Gibson, speaking out against his conviction, claims prosecutors and their witnesses took the jury for a ride. He says the government's witnesses were all confirmed criminals who stood to gain from falsely accusing him.

Gibson says he's rather "go down to Guantanamo Bay and be waterboarded to the point of death" than claim that Riverside ever paid for patients. "I want the jury to remember that, that one day I may be dead and gone, but it's gonna come up. Somebody will come out and tell the truth."

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Not that we needed any further proof that Texans love guns, but here it is anyway, courtesy of the TSA.

As of last week, the TSA had discovered a record-breaking 1,855 firearms in carry-on bags at airports across the nation, and two of the top five airports for those discoveries were -- surprise-- in Texas, including Bush Intercontinental Airport.

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