Gleaned from a piece of research that came across my desk today:

If Evian water were sold in (oil) barrels, it would go for around US$500 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude oil closed at US$58.93 a barrel.

Taking it further, beer goes for HK$10 per 375ml bottle*,which equates to US$544 an oil barrel. Take a bottle of reasonable Aussie red, retailing at HK$110 per 750ml bottle**, that makes US$2,989 per barrel. The outrage isn't that oil is so expensive, it's that alcohol is!

At 46 times the cost of a barrel of oil, no wonder he's smiling

I used US$1 = HK$7.8 and 158.97 litres per oil barrel.

*_{In supermarkets. In LKF it goes for HK$50 (or US$2,720 a barrel), which explains why Allan Zeman is always smiling.}
**_{No wine or beer was consumed in the making of this post, but it may well be consumed after it.}

That's little "d" democrats. Quote of the Day comes from an otherwise alarmist piece on the fragile nature of Sino-American relations in The Standard:

Nobody believes Chinese leaders who claim they're powerless to tackle intellectual property violations. They don't seem to have any problem in stamping out things they deem offensive, such as democracy.

The leader on globalisation in The Economist, as expected, provides a stirring summary of the benefits and urgency of further globalisation, despite growing opposition. It contains this gem:

a bill before Congress devised by one of New York's senators, Charles Schumer, threatens a 27.5% tariff on imports from China if that country does not revalue its currency by an equivalent amount. In Mr Schumer's view, presumably, far too many Chinese peasants are escaping poverty.