The wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and Mary Donaldson earlier this year was overwhelming. Now Frederik's little brother Prince Joachim is divorcing Princess Alexandra (the weekend Almanac), and Denmark is abuzz. Alexandra's very well liked. Danes love to tell foreigners how quickly and how well she learned their language. "She speaks it better than me!" many will tell you. (In Danish.) Then they'll tell you how pretty she is, how intelligent, how much better at everything than you could ever hope to be.

So I suppose I'm just as glad to be rid of her annoying example...

Today's Almanac is up. Turkish translation, Lauren Bacall, and more anarchists. Also an announcement that for the next month or so I'm going to be using this site strictly as a sidebar to the almanacs. I'm just going to post one little article, like this one, upon the publication of each almanac, so that anyone who wants to comment on a particular almanac has the opportunity to do so.

Not long after I published today's Almanac (more on our experience with the Danish naming law), Trine informed me that she'd finally established contact with someone at the church or government office that serves as our liaison to the Name Approval Establishment. He told her we needed to write a letter describing why we wanted Molli spelled with an "i" instead of a "y." It's not enough we've already asked permission: now we have to explain our motives.

Europeans think the U.S. government is turning into some kind of Totalitarian monster because the PATRIOT Act allows law enforcement agencies to find out what library books someone withdraws, but Danes willingly give their own government a veto over what they can name their children.

Argh. I'm ready for my Five-Minute Hate.