NBA lays down the Twitter law

No using PDAs, cell phones or other electronic devices by players, says the NBA's Twitter rules.

The league has defined "during games" as the period of time beginning 45 minutes before the start of a game and ending "after the postgame locker room is open to the media and coaches and players have first fulfilled their obligation to be available to media attending the game."

"During games" also includes halftime, according to the memo.

Then Milwaukee Bucks player Charlie Villanueva famously tweeted during halftime of an NBA game last year.

What can make toddlers fighting with giant foam fingers even funnier?

Having ESPN boxing analyst Teddy Atlas call the action.

James Mercer (of The Shins) and Danger Mouse forming a band

This is cool news:

To be clear, this is not just a "produced by Danger Mouse" one-off thing. Mercer and the Mouse are apparently in it for the long haul and already have plans extending past their first album. The pair recently collaborated on the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse album Dark Night of the Soul. Our review hailed the Mercer track, "Insane Lullaby", as "one of the finest moments on the album."

ANd if you want to hear Insane Lullaby, you can listen to it here (just right click and save for the mp3).

Casinos are everywhere

Nate Silver wrote a very interesting piece in Esquire about the explosion of casinos and how states maybe shouldn't count on gaming to help their state budgets. And it got me thinking...

First, there was one thing jumped out at me:

We have now reached the point at which residents of seventeen of the twenty largest metro areas are within a three-hour drive of a blackjack table. And Washington, D. C., will make it eighteen once Delaware permits blackjack, leaving only Dallas and Atlanta. Just about everyone who wants to gamble in the United States is already a morning's drive away from being able to do so; with the possible exception of isolated Texas, states that open new casinos will mostly be stealing customers from one another.

Between those 18 metropolitan areas (once Delaware approves their gambling), there will be 102,470,600 people -- just in the largest metro areas -- within a three hour drive of gambling.

From where I am sitting right now (in the 59th-largest metro area), I can be at one of four casinos that have blackjack within an hour -- Santa Ana Star Casino, San Felipe Casino Hollywood, Sandia Casino and Route 66 Casino. Put it at three hours, there are probably fifteen casinos that I can hit -- maybe more.

According to the American Gaming Association, there are five racinos (race tracks with slot machines) in the state, one of which is within an hour drive (The Downs Race Track and Casino).

The American Gaming Association says there are 21 tribal casinos in New Mexico. This is the seventh most in the country, behind Oklahoma (96), California (66), Minnesota (31) Washington (31), Wisconsin (29) and Arizona (24).

Three other states have more commercial gambling casinos: Nevada (266), Colorado (40), South Dakota (35, in addition to 11 tribal casinos), and Mississippi (29).

Of those states, only South Dakota has a smaller population than New Mexico. According to the 2008 census estimate, New Mexico had 1.98 million people, while South Dakota had 804,000 people. Nevada, in case you were wondering, had 2.6 million people.

So Nevada has one casino for every 9,774 people.

So what does it all mean? Well, mainly that I have too much time on my hands. And that if I had any money, I could gamble pretty easily.

38-Year Old catcher staying in the major leagues -- for health insurance

A sad, sad tale from Sports Illustrated:

Two years ago, just when Fasano was thinking of finally retiring, his wife, Kerri, gave birth to the couple's third child, a boy named Santo. He was born with hypoplastic heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped. "It was devastating, of course," Sal says. "Your son is helpless, and there's not that much you can do."

There was one thing Sal could do -- find a way to remain in the major leagues. Although baseball diehards who salivate over the perks of the game tend to speak of cathedral-like stadiums and million-dollar paychecks, of fancy travel and high-profile endorsements and red carpet fame, an element they tend to overlook is the major league health plan. If you are a ballplayer, and you spend so much as a second on a major league roster, you are entitled to a year of coverage that, says one major league executive, "takes care of pretty much everything you can think of."

He didn't make it to the major leagues this year, and with just a handful of games left, it doesn't look like the Colorado Rockies are going to call him up.

Usain Bolt visits ESPN HQ

Usain Bolt goes to Bristol, Connecticut and races ESPN employees. Hint: the world record holder in the 100 meter and 200 meter dash won.

Arena football coming back

From the Associated Press:

Officials from what will be known as Arena Football 1 say they will have 16 teams, including three in markets where the former Arena Football League had clubs: Chicago, Phoenix and Orlando, Fla.

The league will also have teams from the AFL spinoff, arenafootball2, as well as at least one team from another indoor league.

Last year, the Arena Football League folded after a number of issues came together at once to doom the niche league.

Stephen Jackson doesn't regret the Malice in the Palace

Remember the huge fight between the Indiana Pacers and the fans of the Detroit Pistons? Well, Stephen Jackson, one of the main characters in that particular drama, says he has no regrets about going into the stands in that fight.

On Monday, he even went as far as to say he regrets nothing in his career, speaking specifically about going into the stands with then-Indiana teammate Ron Artest during an ugly brawl with the Detroit Pistons in 2004.

In case you need a refresher, here's the video of the fight:

Man convicted of stealing locomotive ordered to stay away from trains

From the Miami Herald:

"He knew the workings of the locks, the switches for different tracks,'' Polo told prosecutors. "He knew the train. To my knowledge he knew the train backward and forward. He knew everything . . . And he loved trains."

Ryan Gustin, a special agent for CSX's security force with a knowledge of trains, was also on hand. When Gustin would describe to the officer how trains operate, documents show, Dowdy would finish his sentences.

The man, Brandon Dowdy, reportedly stole the train to go see a house band (Big Dick and the Extenders, in perhaps the only time that phrase will appear in the Miami Herald) play.

His lawyer says he committed the crime because he was off his medicine for bipolar disorder.

Well thats ONE way to fix a crumbling building...

Cool stuff from Dispatch Work. Though I'm sure it is less about actual construction than art.