The strange expertise of burglars
bbc.com
bbc.com
Alarms, dogs, all of that are either useless or reactionary. The only thing that ever really shut me down were laminated windows."
Interesting, certainly hadn't heard that before.
How can you tell a ring is a wedding ring? Do wedding rings have some sort of special design? I thought a wedding ring could be any ring. I am married but neither my spouse or I own any jewelry including wedding rings so I don't know.
There are a lot of exceptions to this. But I assume the burglar kept his rule simple.
The bride who receives the item must be able to tell more or less what it's worth (so that there is no falsehood involved). If the ring is decorated, or if it's made of more than one metal, or if it has jewels on it, this is more difficult.
It's hard to tell just by looking what the quality of a Jewel is, but everyone knows that gold is worth something, and you can see how much gold there is. (So a hollow ring would also be a problem.)
As a result the guidance is that wedding rings are always plain gold bands.
If someone did have other rings, I'd think they'd be visually different, wedding rings typically have one large diamond set with other jewels and a band is dead obvious as it's so plain. A ring with multiple small diamonds or other gemstones (emerald, ruby, etc) would almost always be a safe bet, especially if a ring similar to the traditional wedding ring was available for comparison.
I thought they were usually plain (just the ring, no adornments). Engagement rings tend to be fancier (diamonds etc.) but maybe practice varies between regions.
Did you grow up under a rock? Have you never, ever interacted with people wearing wedding rings?
If not, fine, fair enough. Judging from your comment history, this doesn't seem to be the case.
To answer your question, you can tell if something is "a thing" by comparing said "thing" to other known and accepted "like things." Does that not make sense?
No it wasn't. It was asking what make a wedding ring identifiable as a wedding ring. It confuses me that someone can identify something as a wedding ring when it isn't being worn - I thought that wedding rings were any ring. I know that engagement rings usually have a diamond but I think other rings can have diamonds too?
>Did you grow up under a rock? Have you never, ever interacted with people wearing wedding rings?
Sure, but I don't pay much attention to other people's jewelry because that's just not something I care about. My parents didn't wear wedding rings or any other types of jewelry at all so I guess I did grow up under a rock. I don't think my aunts or uncles wore them either, or does my mother-in-law, - they just aren't "a thing" in my family so I'm out of the cultural loop. Its totally and completely out of my knowledge area. I like learning something new so I figured it was worth asking!
Judging by the variety of comments it seems that there is a variety and the theft's "standards" didn't make sense.
There's two categories of burglars: those that are clever and those who actually are impulsive, indiscriminate, and opportunistic. To group them all together is really untrue else "crimes of opportunity" wouldn't be a thing.. I've seen cases of some really dumb and obviously unplanned burglaries - including the time my own house was burglarized. I've seen even dumber petty thefts - those that were impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic to a T. Example: a friend of mine had a bottle of Gatorade stolen from her car but the robber left the cash in the (unlocked) glove compartment.
OTOH, a friend of mine had her car broken into around the same time in the mid-90's and the factory radio was stolen professionally. The thief only broke the tiny side quarter window and then reached in to open the door. It was a very neat, precise theft. All the screws and trim were in a tidy pile on the driver's seat. The stereo was carefully extracted with no damage to the dashboard. The thief quite clearly took his time to do this. She speculated that he probably saw them get out of the car and go into her friend's house where there was a party so he knew he had time.
burgle -> burglar -> burglarize -> burglarizer -> burglarizerize -> burglarizerizer -> ... ?
(Yes, this is off-topic pedantry; I can't help myself; sorry).
Edit: corrected my assertion that burglar comes from burgle.
(The first definition for "burglarize" in the OED is "To rob burglariously", which is wonderful. For "burgle" they note that it's "a back-formation < burglar n., of very recent appearance, though English Law Latin had a verb burgulare of same meaning. Orig. colloq. or humorous." They define it too using the adverb "burglariously".)
Were it otherwise, we would write "burgler".
If the vast majority of people say burglarize - then that is correct. The purpose of language is communicating information - and if the information is being communicated in a manner that most people can agree on the meaning of the information; then the language is doing its job.
This is why you can google something on Yahoo. The 'official' (and recent) definition specifies the Google search engine, but many people use the word "google" as a synonym for "search".
I love getting into arguments with people who treat their dictionaries like a religious text then using words with modern meanings that have nothing to do with their etymology.
I'm not sure about that. Using 'hoovering' as a synonym for vacuuming is really common at home. But Google as a brand is so strong that I'm not convinced people really disassociate the verb from the search engine.
And it does turn out, it seems, that 'burglarize' is legit (and I failed to do my homework). But I still dislike it intensely: why use more syllables/more letters when you could use fewer with exactly the same meaning? (I also have a preference, albeit weaker, for oriented over orientated, and so on).
Btw, you might like http://verben.texttheater.net/Englisch (and if you know German, the rest of their stuff is great, too).
No it isn't. Not where I'm from, I've never heard of the word "burgle."
> Well, you are the burglar. Go down and burgle something.
Instead, Nee says one trick could be to find something unexpected that doesn’t fit the usual script of a crime, breaking the burglar out of the automatic, below-conscious processing. “That’s likely to make them abandon the crime,” Nee suggests. Playing a recording of someone’s footsteps, or even something as simple as gentle white noise, might be distracting enough to perturb the burglar. Equally, you could lay out your house in a distinct way – anything that confuses their automatic mental maps. “The thing is, you have to be innovative over time because burglars will get used to whatever you do,” she says.
and
For the time being, there are some easy measures that we could all take. Besides the obvious (remembering to close windows and lock doors) Nee thinks one of the best strategies is to pretend that someone is always in the house; almost all the burglars she has interviewed report that they will do anything to avoid a face-to-face encounter
whatever you do, you have to keep changing it, because burglars will get used to it.
Excuse me? If you have that much burglar traffic in your home, maybe you ought to just move.
For example, it could be recommended to install motion-sensing lights. Burglars figure out dead zones to those lights to avoid them. Then you upgrade to a video feed. Then burglars figure out those dead zones. Then you upgrade to cameras on a timed swivel. And so on...
I think.
If so, then I think you should consider moving again. Sooner rather than later.
If it was a while ago, did you have any more problems?
Particularly strong in Texas, at least until the law is judicially nullified as it's been in other states in the nation like Oklahoma, where you to can use lethal force to stop a theft, as in someone walking away holding your TV, after a verbal warning.
With chip and pin cards it would be even easier, a card with the chip programmed to alert the cashier when ever it is used.
Yes, it worked.
My vague takeaway is that burglars rely on patterns of typical household layouts and homeowner behaviors so that they can do their work, as it were, at a higher level of abstraction than an amateur can. Anything that you can do to frustrate their assumptions of typicality, then, might lower their efficiency or discourage them from attempting a burglary in the first place. Perhaps some clever applications of home automation tech could be employed. Or if you're fortunate enough to keep an inconsistent schedule, that too could help.
My personal tip: when away from home for a while, I try to leave an electric timer connected to a light.
I also use a timer-based radio tuned to a channel with lots of speaking (rather than music). Just be careful. I once left it too loud and the neighbours downstairs complained... (luckily it was running on my pc, so I could ssh into it and turn the volume down remotely).
They have an "away" mode where it will randomize the circuit it's connected to during the normal evening hours after sunset.
We had a house a couple doors down burglarized twice within 6 months. I'm still being stubborn and keeping one of my cars on our driveway whenever I can.
http://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/0...
So, find baroque and time consuming ways of storing high value stuff. Having said that, you would be hard put to find £1000 worth of stuff in my humble home even given an hour or two, unless you happen to be stealing on commission for a circle of book dealers...
That would probably throw off and disturb most people, let alone a burglar in your house.