PUTTING THE PARTY back in “Dinner Party.”

ERIC S. RAYMOND on those disruptive smartphones.

THE GROWING THREAT OF antibiotic-resistant infections.

LAWN DARTS AND MORE: The Story Behind 5 Banned Toys and Games. And what could go wrong with the “Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab?”

Related item here.

NOT UNDERSTANDING how insurance works.

THINGS YOU NEVER HEAR: “Wow, I didn’t realize how wrong I was about everything until I read this Frank Rich column.” From Jim Treacher.

A MAINSTREAM MEME that cannot speak its name.

CHARLES RANGEL UPDATE: New York Post: Charlie The Coward.

IN THE MAIL: From John Scalzi, The God Engines.

ANDREW KLAVAN ON moving beyond the stereotypes of liberalism.

A CHART WORTH RUNNING AGAIN: From Cato: Five Decades of Federal Spending.

I’m expecting the “interest” line to head sharply upward in the future.

UPDATE: Reader John Baker writes: “Not another hockey stick!”

ABC NEWS: Lamar Alexander: Health Care Reform a Political “Kamikaze Mission” for Democrats.

PRESS RELEASE, NEWS STORY, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? “On February 23, ABC TV Channel 7, WTRF News (Wheeling, West Virginia/ Steubenville, Ohio), posted on its website what was originally credited as a story ‘written by’ reporter Bob Westfall. Unfortunately, though, this posting was nothing but a word-for-word re-posting of Democrat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s latest press release. There was little to no difference between Brown’s press release and the ‘story’ as posted on the ABC 7 news site.” Sadly, this isn’t new: In The Appearance of Impropriety, the chapter on plagiarism notes similar incidents. You can read that online here.

I KEEP POINTING OUT THAT IT’S A MISTAKE TO GO AFTER BLOGGERS: Whistleblower Site Back After Microsoft Withdraws Complaint. “Microsoft’s efforts to suppress a document about how to subpoena online user data backfired, leading instead to widespread attention to (and republication of) the document it tried to suppress.”

CALIFORNIA UPDATE: “Amid a crippling fiscal crisis, managers throughout California’s government have routinely allowed their employees to amass unused vacation time, enabling hundreds of workers to end their public service careers with payouts topping $100,000, a California Watch investigation has found. One worker combined vacation and compensatory time to walk away with more than $800,000, records show.”

THE DANGER OF daily aspirin.

BLIZZARDS NO BARRIER: Hartford Tea Party attendance surges. “Attendance at a Hartford rally against big government tripled this year, according to a local activist who attended, indicating sentiment against President Obama’s proposals remains strong. Lisbon resident Jen Ezzell estimated the Saturday crowd at between 300 to 400, up from 125 last year.”

“STANDING ROOM ONLY:” A report from the first British Tea Party rally.

YOU CAN CALL LAMAR ALEXANDER MANY THINGS, BUT NOT “WHISKEY-VOICED.” That’s somebody thinking in decades-old stereotypes, not actually reporting. Though I think Lamar did have a cold that day. . . .

LIFE’S PROBLEMS: Cookie dysfunction. It’s kind of like Erectile Dysfunction, only with cookies. “For many days over the course of a year, I baked perfect cookies. And then one day, I did not. And every day thereafter, I did not.”

EATING BOOGERS STIMULATES YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM. So, you see, it was really a subliminal health-care reform message.

SAVE YOUR HEART by flossing?

OLD STORY: New media just sponge off old media. NEW STORY: Old media just sponge off new media for tsunami coverage. “Much of the reporting was from citizen journalists via webcams, Skype, and Ustream. Meanwhile, anchors were regularly referring to information coming to them by social networking websites such as Twitter.”

ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING MORE BIG EARTHQUAKES? Probably not.

The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit with a 7.0-magnitude quake on Friday night. News of that tremor, the Haiti quake and now Chile may make it seem as if Earth is becoming ever more active. But in the grand scheme of things, geologists say this is just Mother Nature as usual.

“From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent,” Arrowsmith said. “But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance.”

Coupled with better communication, as the human population skyrockets and we move into more hazardous regions, we’re going to hear more about the events that do occur, Arrowsmith added.

Just keep the New Madrid fault quiet, please.

ABORTION DOULAS offer unconditional support.