I suppose Vienna has often been known as a depressing place – Freud’s hometown and all. Still, police there were taken aback last Saturday from witnesses reporting one person after the other jumping off a certain bridge into the cold waters of the Danube.

But these Viennois were not in dispair of life at all. They loved life, and in particular all the good things money can bring to it. Upon visiting the scene, the policemen discovered that numerous €100 and €500 bills were to be found floating on the water. (Strangely, no mention here of €200 bills.)

Naturally, further reinforcements and a boat were called to collect up as much of the currency as was left, and then to dry it all, as you see in that hilarious photo of the drying-rack. It was real money, all right; they just don’t (yet) know to whom it belongs. There haven’t been any recent reports of robbery in that area, for example.

No, we don’t mean there’s been a new crime-wave perpetrated by cripples criss-crossing the Old Continent; nor (even though this is a little bit more likely) some illicit fund-raising campaign undertaken by ISIS fighters having had to return from their MidEast adventures due to grievous upper-body injuries.

Rather, for “one-armed bandit” here we are referring to the slot machine, that most-insidious piece of gambling equipment capable of enchanting for hours – and many dollars, euros, or what have you lost – on end quite considerable cohorts of people with the particular psychological disposition to be so captivated. Especially in it most-modern incarnation, i.e. those machines governed by internal software, far from offering players any “fair” game it is rather carefully programmed to manipulate the sucker sitting before it so as to extract the maximum of money.

A modern-day societal plague, in short; yet thereby irresistible to those businesses, and occasionally even governments, which can manage to gain permission to make the investment into equipment and then set them up so as to start preying upon the passing parade of suckers.

In terms of the latest news from Europe on this score, as is so often the case we witness one step forward together with one back. Starting in Austria:

Ralf Leonhard is the Austrian correspondent for the Berlin newspaper the taz (Die Tageszeitung), and he reports about how, as of January 1, das kleine Glückspiel – “small-scale gambling” – has been banned within the city of Vienna. That basically boils down to one-armed bandits, which previously numbered some 2,600 in the city, spread out among 505 locations of which 69 were Spiellokale, that is, pure slot-machine halls. (The other establishments were places like bars and cafés; they’re now banned there, too.) (more…)

Psssst Hey pal. Yeah – you! Things getting a little cool with the old lady? Been wondering lately just where is that ol’ loving feeling? Tell me this: has she let you know that she’ll be out this coming Saturday afternoon (9 February), doing some shopping or getting together with her girlfriends, or for somesuch other reason? She has? And do you live anywhere near Utrecht (that famous old city in the Netherlands)? My friend, I’ve got to give it to you straight: your wife/partner/significant other will probably be on her way then straight to the Divorce Fair scheduled for that day in Utrecht’s convention hall, the Jaarbeurs. (more…)