Comments on: Ah, freedom

By: lucklucky

lucklucky — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:53:38 +0000

I remember a video of the French troops in Mali where some people were showing cigarettes as symbol of freedom from Al Qaeda…

By: Michael Jennings (London)

Michael Jennings (London) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:16:48 +0000

It costs 100 Armenian dram to play the machine. A packet of cigarettes costs 500 dram or so. There are about 650 dram to the British pound. Thus one needs to win better than one time in five in order to make it worthwhile. Thus I think the machine exists mainly to relieve boredom for people with a few coins in their pockets.

By: Tedd

Tedd — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 15:35:21 +0000

One of my fondest memories is encountering a young Artful Dodger type at the London fall fair (our London, not your London) who was an expert at snagging cigarettes from such a machine. He could get a pack on almost every try, which he would then sell at an impressive profit. I have no idea what laws, if any, applied to that situation at the time, but I imagine paroxysms of outrage in the media today if such a thing were discovered to be going on. How did we get here from there in such a short period of time? (I'm not all that old.)

By: dave

dave — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:29:51 +0000

Note that they still have the government mandated warning messages plastered on the sides of the smokes.

By: Paul Marks

Paul Marks — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:14:26 +0000

Agreed Michael.

Perhaps it is folly – but freedom means allowing people to engage in such folly.

By: John Galt

John Galt — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:31:45 +0000

Hmm. If I was still addicted to nicotine (thankfully now in remission), I’d have to be either pretty desperate or pretty bored (and cheap to play) for me to fight with one of these notoriously difficult machines on the off-chance of ‘winning’ a pack of smokes.