Interesting Links for 28-10-2011

• French government 'banning vegetarianism' in school canteens
  (tags: food france vegetarianism )
• Wheat is EVIL. Apparently.
  (tags: wheat gluten weight diet food health )
• Samuel L. Jackson Is the highest-grossing actor of all time.
  (tags: SamuelLJackson movies money )
• Sentencing laws: Mandatory life and public protection. A difficult balancing act
  (tags: crime law prison uk mentalhealth )
• Livejournal apparently having massive privacy/security issues right now.
  (tags: privacy security livejournal )
• An explanation of the latest Livejournal security/privacy mess.
  (tags: livejournal security privacy )
• Ex-Prime Minster's claim £1.7million for "public duties".
  (tags: expenses politics margaretthatcher tonyblair money )
• Company makes children's toys out of their own drawings. Almost offensively cute.
  (tags: toys children art toy )
• Google's latest response on pseudonyms on G+
  (tags: google googleplus pseudonymity )
• Google+ is now available with Google Apps (migration tool coming soon)
  migration
  (tags: google googleplus )
• Samsung overtakes Apple in smartphone sales. We'll see how they are once the 4S figures come in.
  (tags: Apple iphone mobile Samsung smartphone )
• How the new public sector pensions will work
  (tags: pensions uk )
• UK clocks change trial being considered - moving us onto Central European Time.
  (tags: time europe uk )
• Google Denies Requests To Remove Videos of Police Brutality
  (tags: police google video freespeech )
• Wired Readers Suggest The Greatest Geek Books of All Time. They are clearly old.
  (tags: geeks books wired )
• Directors' pay rose 50% in past year.
  (tags: inequality Pay uk business )

Media Extravaganza - stuff what I has seen recently

The halloween episode of Season 3 of Community was great fun - a nice mashup of different styles. Last week's was also rather good - multiple timelines splitting from the same event, tying together nicely at the end. I continue to enjoy the way that the writers constantly fuck with audience expectations and manage to both push the limits of what you can do in a TV show while remaining grounded character-wise. It works very well for me.

Lion King 3D was pretty epic. It's one of my favourite Disney movies. The 3D worked very well, the movie was as awesome as ever, and I cried at exactly the same point that I always do. Jeremy Irons does evil spectacularly well, and I had somehow forgotten that Darth Vader is Ferris Bueller's father.

Borderlands continues to be fun to play - I've started again with Julie, and we've been carving our way through skags (alien dog-things), blowing up bandits and running over anything that wanders into our path. The driving has been particularly fun, as she's been in the driving seat, while I've taken gunner, picking things off from long distance. After her nervousness about playing something violent and FPS-related she surprised me by taking "Brick", a large chap who is apparently made of muscles and speicalises in charging into hand-to-hand combat. There's something...exciting about watching your fiancee punch bad guys to death :->

I really want to get to see We Need To Talk About Kevin while it's still in the cinema. I might try and encourage Julie in that direction over the next few days. I loved the book, and although she bounced off of it really hard that was more to do with the writing style than anything else.