Quietly brilliant products you might not have known you needed

[40hz]

Just got an email from a friend directing me to this: Anti-Theft Lunchbags. Pre-printed with a rather nasty looking mold image to discourage casual theft.

[attachthumb=#]     [attachthumb=#]

Do you know of any other products that make good use of human psychology?

[Ath]

[rgdot]

Something similar but for cars 

[superboyac]

How about a classic?


Or a superboyac special: in the dorms, I hid my valuables inside seemingly soiled underwear off to the side in the underwear drawer.

[IainB]

...Anti-Theft Lunchbags. Pre-printed with a rather nasty looking mold image to discourage casual theft.

I am curious to know: What sad part of the world would you have to live in to need to protect your sandwiches from being stolen?

[40hz]

...Anti-Theft Lunchbags. Pre-printed with a rather nasty looking mold image to discourage casual theft.

I am curious to know: What sad part of the world would you have to live in to need to protect your sandwiches from being stolen?

American high schools and university dorm rooms. 

[mwb1100]

I am curious to know: What sad part of the world would you have to live in to need to protect your sandwiches from being stolen?

In the States your lunch isn't safe even in a police station: http://www.click2houston.com/news/Police-officer-accused-of-stealing-out-of-department-s-refrigerator/-/1735978/8829550/-/view/print/-/115h029z/-/index.html

[superboyac]

...Anti-Theft Lunchbags. Pre-printed with a rather nasty looking mold image to discourage casual theft.

I am curious to know: What sad part of the world would you have to live in to need to protect your sandwiches from being stolen?

American high schools and university dorm rooms. 

And most business places.  I took someones OJ once (it was a dare, calm down).  My sister told me people would always take her food from the forensic lab she was working in.

[IainB]

Wow. The only places I can recall food being stolen is on the very odd occasion when using communal fridges in backpacker hotels or campsites in New Zealand, but then marking your food (e.g., with name or room-number) usually seems to work.
I guess there will always be people who quite literally do not care and will steal whatever they want.

[40hz]

I guess there will always be people who quite literally do not care and will steal whatever they want.

My GF works for the state social service. She maintains that the word "entitled" is the most dangerous and corrosive word in the American-English dictionary. The ever more widespread attitude that says: "I'm entitled..." is what is destroying most of what America used to be about.

She could be right.

[IainB]

I guess there will always be people who quite literally do not care and will steal whatever they want.

My GF works for the state social service. She maintains that the word "entitled" is the most dangerous and corrosive word in the American-English dictionary. The ever more widespread attitude that says: "I'm entitled..." is what is destroying most of what America used to be about.
She could be right.

Well, that's a bit off-topic, but I'll follow it anyway, if you don't mind: the state social services probably spawned the ubiquitous cliché term "entitlement" in the first place, with phrases such as, for example, "Your unemployment benefits entitlement".
Admittedly it's from a distant and relatively ignorant perspective, but my take on things is that "what America used to be about" has arguably already been destroyed anyway - or maybe just bent and twisted out of all recognition is all.   

Going back to topic - on nifty products you might not have known you needed - on the theme of things to stop theft, these look quite interesting:
How to Make a Hollow Book
How to Hide Things in Your Room

[Renegade]

Wow. The only places I can recall food being stolen is on the very odd occasion when using communal fridges in backpacker hotels or campsites in New Zealand, but then marking your food (e.g., with name or room-number) usually seems to work.
I guess there will always be people who quite literally do not care and will steal whatever they want.

That's why the next day you bring a bag with boston creme donuts... that you have conveniently stuffed with ex-lax...

[TaoPhoenix]

I am curious to know: What sad part of the world would you have to live in to need to protect your sandwiches from being stolen?

School bullies don't steal geek's lunches in other countries?  

I thought that was your "startup investment" to building the brains you need later in life.

[oblivion]

My GF works for the state social service. She maintains that the word "entitled" is the most dangerous and corrosive word in the American-English dictionary. The ever more widespread attitude that says: "I'm entitled..." is what is destroying most of what America used to be about.

Not just America, I think. There seems to be an expectation -- at least in the West -- these days that work is what you do to fill your time between trying to get onto some reality TV show that will make your fortune.

(Of course, the word "reality" needs to be taken with a pinch of salt the size of a small country.)

I think part of the problem is the expectation of fairness, however. Since the late 1960s, there's been a gradual increase in a belief that society should be "fair." Add in the media's insistence that we all spend our time salivating at the lifestyles of celebrities (including vast numbers of people who are merely famous for being famous) and perhaps it's not surprising that nobody anymore believes that what's "fair" is a lifestyle significantly below that of the Beckhams.

[IainB]

School bullies don't steal geek's lunches in other countries?  

Well, it doesn't seem to be an issue in most New Zealand schools, as far as know. My daughter Lily is aged 10+, and I just asked her if she had ever come across or heard of children stealing other kids' lunches, or coercing them to give up their food. She's never heard of it happening and was surprised to hear that it apparently happens in some other countries and she is now curious to know in which countries it does happen.

The NZ schools seem to have a pretty good control on bullying, and presumably food-stealing would be regarded as just another form of bullying. Lily detests bullying - verbal (taunting) or physical - and would sing out if she saw it happening. She will also wade in to the defence of those being bullied. She told me only the other day that last year she had kicked and punched two boys (both bigger than she) when they were bullying another boy, to stop them from physically hurting him. She hadn't thought to mention it to me at the time and only mentioned it to me in the context of some teasing/bullying that had been going on recently with an autistic boy in her class (which was promptly dealt with by the school - in a really good way - after my mentioning it to the vice-principal).

In the interests of the children getting full nutrition, the school insists that parents provide them with nutritionally balanced lunchbox contents, and some sweet/junk foods are forbidden.
For the same reason, children are not supposed to offer their food to other children, and schoolyard trashcans have been removed and children told to take their lunch trash home so the parents can see what the child has or has not been eating.

Maybe if the schools were not so well-organised in this regard, food stealing might be common.

[40hz]

I guess there will always be people who quite literally do not care and will steal whatever they want.

My GF works for the state social service. She maintains that the word "entitled" is the most dangerous and corrosive word in the American-English dictionary. The ever more widespread attitude that says: "I'm entitled..." is what is destroying most of what America used to be about.
She could be right.

Well, that's a bit off-topic, but I'll follow it anyway, if you don't mind: the state social services probably spawned the ubiquitous cliché term "entitlement" in the first place, with phrases such as, for example, "Your unemployment benefits entitlement".
Admittedly it's from a distant and relatively ignorant perspective, but my take on things is that "what America used to be about" has arguably already been destroyed anyway - or maybe just bent and twisted out of all recognition is all.    

Going back to topic ...

FWIW I think you missed all of the nuance; along with a good bit of the point in her comment. Understandable. You don't live here.  

[IainB]

FWIW I think you missed all of the nuance; along with most of the point in her comment. Understandable. You don't live here.  

Eh? Oh, sorry if I missed the nuance and point.
I was just:

• (a) Supposing that the likely originators of the "corrosive" cliché ("entitled/entitlement") were people in the social services in some part of the world - though your GF did not suggest that, nor do I have any proof to substantiate my supposition. So it's a supposed irony, you see.
• (b) At the same drawing a distinction between the present continuous of the verb ("is destroying most of what America used to be about") and the past tense of the transitive verb ("has destroyed most of what America used to be about").

So I was really just emphasising and agreeing with what your GF said in the first point re "entitled", and suggesting in the second point that the situation could be much worse in fact than your GF may think. A bit depressing really.

My brain hurts.