I read the remark from the Fray at the bottom of my last Slate column. That guy makes a good point. All this talk about "integration" of Europe's immigrants has long bothered me, but I've never been able to put my finger on why, exactly. (In my own defense, the admittedly non-sensical phrase "second-generation immigrant" is in common use in America, the land of immigrants.) More to come on this if the restaurant's not too crazy during weekend brunch and I have time to post to Fistful. Did I mention that Tulip Cafe now serves a buffet brunch on Saturday and Sunday?

Then there's this:

[Dutch] police have declined to say whether the [anti-terror] operation [in The Hague] is related to the van Gogh murder or whether it would have occurred anyway—indeed, Agence France-Press quotes police saying it is not related—yet nearly every news account links the two cases.

My editor initially struck that sentence on the grounds that she recalled that Reuters had confirmed a connection. But she soon decided that she's probably imagined that and the sentence belonged there after all. And indeed, that was the question I posed to the author of the blog Zacht Ei. You can look at our exchange here.

Speaking of mysterious Dutch connections, why does the reclusive Salam Pax have a single period posted to his defunct blog on August 18, linked to this Dutch-English blog containing various travelogue/image journals apparently posted from the Czech Republic? And no, there is no Dutch connection with Tulip. I just liked the word.