Former Treasury Secretary O’Neill’s eyebrow raising prediction:

If the United States doesn’t get its finances in order, the coming years will make the current recession “look like a child’s birthday party,” said former Treasury secretary and Alcoa chairman Paul O’Neill.

“We’re headed for the wall at lightning speed. And every day that we don’t deal with that set of problems is another day closer to absolutely vaporizing our economy,” he said.

“Not to overstate the problem.”

Raising the World’s I.Q.–Nicolas Kristof

Travelers to Africa and Asia all have their favorite forms of foreign aid to “make a difference.” One of mine is a miracle substance that is cheap and actually makes people smarter.

Unfortunately, it has one appalling side effect. No, it doesn’t make you sterile, but it is just about the least sexy substance in the world. Indeed, because it’s so numbingly boring, few people pay attention to it or invest in it. (Or dare write about it!)

It’s iodized salt.

Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness.

When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world.

Development geeks rave about the benefits of adding iodine and other micronutrients (such as vitamin A, iron, zinc and folic acid) to diets. The Copenhagen Consensus, which brings together a panel of top global economists to find the most cost-effective solutions to the world’s problems, puts micronutrients at the top of the list of foreign aid spending priorities.

“Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives … at such low cost and in such a short time.”

Christopher Buckley on once accidentally getting handed secret nuclear launch codes, and then reluctantly giving them back to Obama’s likely Director of National Intelligence:

I sought out Admiral Murphy. “Dan,” I said, “I thought you might be interested in this.” He read it. Dan, a former Naval aviator who had commanded the Sixth Fleet during the Yom Kippur War was not the sort to jaw-drop, but his eyes did widen and he did exhale in a whistly sort of way. He looked at me a bit suspiciously and said, “Where did you get this?” I explained, adding with a smile, “I thought it might, you know, come in … handy?” Dan nodded, folded it and tucked it away in his vest pocket. He smiled and winked. I smiled and winked.

After that, things were ever so collegial aboard Air Force Two. Commander Blair’s editorial comments to me consisted of variations on “Sheer genius, Buckley!” and “Another home run!”

If this opening paragraph from the New Yorker about the legendary and outrageous political operative Roger Stone doesn’t hook you, I don’t know what will:

A sign inside the front door of Miami Velvet, a night club of sorts in a warehouse-style building a few minutes from the airport, states, “If sexual activity offends you in any way, do not enter the premises.” At first glance, though, the scene inside looks like a nineteen-eighties disco, with a bar, Madonna at high volume, flashing lights, a stripper’s pole, and a dancer’s cage. But a flat-screen television on the wall plays porn videos, and many clubgoers disappear into locker rooms and emerge wearing towels. From there, some of them go into a lounge, a Jacuzzi room, or one of about half a dozen private rooms to have sex—with their dates or with new acquaintances. Miami Velvet is the leading “swingers’ club” in Miami, and Roger Stone took me there to explain the role he may have played in the fall of Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York.