And then he dipped a horsehair toothbrush in a yellow box of bicarbonate of soda and assaulted his grimace in the spotted mirror hanging over the washstand, amusing himself by rhyming: Gerardus M.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Exiles'

The government recently imposed fresh anti-dumping duties on Chinese imports of sodium bicarbonate, for example, at the request of Penrice Soda Holdings, Australia's sole producer of soda-ash crystals, which appear in everything from animal feed to antacids.

ECONOMIST: Petri-dish economies