Publishers dont think much of us

I was somewhat amused when Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in America as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I just found it somewhat amusing that one of the most famous children's books of all time had to be bowlderized of the word "philosopher" in order to be palatable to American children.

As a lover of mathematics, I was a little bit indignant when Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem was republished as Fermat's Enigma. I mean, Fermat's Last Theorem was the holy grail of Mathematics for 400 years, and it was univerally referred to as FLT. Renaming it to Fermat's Enigma based on some publisher's market research (or personal whim) is a bit of a horrorshow.

Now I find that the book I ordered for my sister's boyfriend for Chrismas has also been given the Americanized-Title-Treatment. I ordered a book from Amazon that I thought was an American-published book named "Killing Bono". When it arrived (about 2 weeks after Christmas) I received the original UK version of the book entitled I Was Bono's Doppelganger.

So, us American's can't deal with philosophers, theorems, dopplegangers, eh? I'm thinking I should be offended by this.

And we have a contender...

For worst headline of the year:

"Spears Falls Asleep in Vegas Nightclub"

This was actually the major headline on my news portal today and it wasnt even in the "entertainment news" section. It was just above some article on Gerald Ford's funeral. If you click on a headline like this, I cant be friends with you....sorry.