Welcome to The Faster Times update. In today's edition, we bring you censorship in Pakistan, an Islamist Egypt, Tiger Mom: The Movie, class warfare, and a culinary mystery. Enjoy!

Slackistan is a mockumentary about nothing. At feature movie length, I was a little hesitant about going to the screening. Watching over-privileged kids whine and whittle away their youth is not for the faint-hearted. My favourite literary tramp sums the film up quite well: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” And yet, a movie about seemingly ‘nothing’ has stirred the moral fibres of Pakistan’s Central Board of Film Censors and without certain cuts, which the director Hammad Khan has refused to make, means it is effectively banned in Pakistan.

It is not at all clear what will happen in the Egyptian revolution. It is not a surprise that this is happening. Hosni Mubarak has been president for more than a quarter of a century, ever since the assassination of Anwar Sadat. He is old and has been ill. No one expected him to live much longer, and his apparent plan, which was that he would be replaced by his son, Gamal, was not going to happen even though it was a possibility a year ago. There was no one, save his closest business associates, who wanted to see Mubarak’s succession plans happen.

As you have no doubt heard by now, Amy Chua’s memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has sparked a national controversy. In her memoir, Ms. Chua argues that the way to make your children work harder is to be really mean to them — which seems like a shockingly obvious and yet horrible idea. Somehow, Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua got a whole book out of it, though; a book in which she describes how the endless yellow horde of Chinese children are superior to American white devil children, because — because, well, Chinese moms are really mean to their kids.

We’ve been hearing a great deal about “class warfare,” lately, though it’s hardly a new phrase. It conjures up some fairly intense imagery, at least in its recent incarnation as a retaliatory accusation against those who have protested the concentration of wealth among the top ten percent. I don’t know about you, but when I hear it I definitely see visions of angry peasants storming palaces, torches in hand, crying out for the heads of the affluent elite.

What the fork, England? You had me going for a while I’ll give you that. What with your characteristically quaint, newspaper wrapped fish and chips (fried up the old school way—in beef drippings—like fast food places in the States used to, until they caved to the food-do-gooders), and historic steak and ale pie, just like King Henry VIII used to eat (pie crust so fantastically flaky because, again, it’s made with suet, psst—that’s beef fat), and your cheddarific Welsh Rarebit (okay, granted this one is from your neighbour Wales, but that’s a detail I can overlook), and surprisingly delicious crackling (pig skin fried until light, salty, crispy and eyes-rolled-in-the-back-of-my-head scrumptious). I was living the gastronomic dream in Ye Olde food porn.

Then, you bamboozled me with rollmops—rollmops!