(no subject)

I remember when the phrase "at the end of the day"--meaning "in the final analysis", or "when you get down to it"--was a distinctly British phrase. If you heard it being used by someone, they were either British, or they'd picked it up there.

Sometime in the last decade or two, it crossed the Atlantic, and now it's not much of a marker at all, as I hear it in general use in the States.

Anyone else have this memory? Or have a more exact idea of when it might have happened?

(no subject)

The Economist's Buttonwood blog has posted a Global Debt Comparison visualization at http://buttonwood.economist.com/content/gdc. You can use the page to compare how deeply in debt various countries are.

The world total is $35 trillion and counting. Fortunately we just owe that money to other earthlings rather than, say, some other planet.