Plato's Popular Quotes (Meaningful Misquotes Quote #2)

Ah yes, this quote. I'll be frank, I'm not usually one for inspirational quotes, but this is one of the few I honestly really like. I've seen a lot of quotes on Pinterest that are attributed to Plato, and a friend was asking about another quote which sent me searching. Turns out a lot of Plato's quotes that you see on Pinterest aren't actually Plato's... go figure.

Over at Quote Investigator, O'Toole looks at the history of this quote. Turns out the first record of it was in 1897, and was penned by a man named John Watson who published under the name of Ian Maclaren:

“IAN MACLAREN,” along with other celebrities, was asked to send a Christmas message to an influential religious weekly in England. He responded by sending the short but striking sentence: “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.” No message is more needed in our days of stress and storm, of selfish striving and merciless competition.

I'm sure we've all seen this one as well on Pinterest and on Facebook.

But at Honey and Locusts, John actually traces down the original text from Plato:

“Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime.” [Book IX]

Which when broken into layman's terms sounds kinda like the quote we've all seen, but knowing how Plato thought seems to actually push the quote into a different direction. As John says in his post about the Plato quotes:

"While it’s true that Plato did say something vaguely similar in, I think the paraphrase misrepresents what Plato was really saying. The “good” need the law, both for instruction in what is right, and for the restraining of the “bad'"

So there you go. I'm sure there are probably dozens, if not hundreds of quotes on the internet that are miscredited, this is merely one of many. But if you're interested in reading more of Plato's work, you can either download a free copy over at Archive.org or buy it on Amazon.

Glow in the Dark Bubbles

"Cut open glow sticks & pour them into bubble solution. Glow in the dark bubbles. I like the idea for summer nights & camping"

Who hasn't seen this idea going around not just Pinterest but Facebook and the like? Looking at the picture, this looks like this would be true. And it is, sort of. You see, you CAN add glow stick formula to bubbles easy enough. The problem comes in that even though the bottle of bubbles does glow, the bubbles themselves? Not so much. At all really. First off - that photo? It's a photo of "Miracle Bubbles Glow Fusion" bubbles, which you can buy retail, not of someone DIYing glow in the dark bubbles. How do I know this? the bottle shape. Here's the source of the image above (flickr) 

For this post I decided to buy the glow bubbles shown above instead of DIYing it. I really dislike cutting open glowsticks for a couple of reasons; the smell alone that lingers is awful and being not quite summer, I didn't want that smell lingering in my house from bubbles. They come with two packs of activators - I'm not having a lot of luck with finding what is in these pouches, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's the same, if not similar formula used in glow sticks. We decided to do this on the last day of spring break, as a sort of kiddie rave party for our kids. We waited until dark and turned out all the lights and pulled the drapes closed to make the house as dark as possible for this, then crank up some electronica music and mixed the bubbles with the activators.

no joke, this isn't just a black square.
I promise it's an actual photo.

Over to the left you can see two photos I took of our party. I'm not joking, the first one is really a photo taken without the flash, the second one with a flash on. So the bubbles don't glow when you blow them. I didn't figured they would, due to surface mass and tension and all that, but when they landed and popped? That was a whole different story. I tried to get a good photo of it, as it looked like the most beautiful milky way space image but I wasn't able to quite capture it with my camera. 

See? Bubbles!

 Which brings up another issue with this: I would HIGHLY recommend using this either outdoors, or in a house with hardwood floors. Everything by the end was covered in glowing solution.  Luckily we had the hindsight to roll up the area rug and do this in our entrance room so it wouldn't get on the sofa in the living room, but the kids still needed a good bath when it was done with.

So all in all, as fun as this is, don't expect to have literally glow in the   dark bubbles. It doesn't matter how dark you get the place (as shown in the photo there to the left) these bubbles just aren't going to GLOW like you want them to. It was still fun though, and something we plan to do again maybe this summer - but outdoors this time, as I don't feel like hosing down the kids and mopping floors so late at night. 

DIY Nail Decals

"wrap a plastic sandwich baggie around a cd and secure. Paint hearts of varying sizes and colors making sure to use a lot of polish so it won't crack when you remove them later. Let dry for 6+ hours. Carefully remove hearts from plastic. Add to your nails using clear polish. Finish with a top coat to seal." 

Ok I will admit two things - first, I'm just as guilty as a lot of people for reopening this idea. It SOUNDS like it would work. Second, this is a bit different from my usual posts in that I don't have a lot of research or data to back this, nor is it all that bad. 

I spent 4 hours yesterday experimenting with this pin. I originally had just set out to do my nails, but as it failed time and time again I realized there was a post to be had with this. 

I started out with 2 forms to try this on - a plastic bag like the pin states, and wax paper. I figured I could try both and see which worked easier. The problem comes about when you look at how nail polish differs from other forms of paint - it's far thinner and binds differently than, say, craft or wall paint does. 

I had started out with 2 colors, done in 2 coats on wax paper. Attempting to peel it off just resulted in crinkled and torn paper. So I tried the plastic baggie. Again, no amount of picking at or scratching was getting the paint to peel off. So I added 2 more coats and let it dry and tried again. It wasn't budging. 2 more coats, letting that dry, and still nothing. I finally gave up and tried another trick that was posted on pinterest - painting your basic scotch tape with nail polish and using that as decals. At first it actually seemed to work - it was far easier to just cut the painted tape into the shapes I wanted (racing stripes, because I like my nails to look like they are going fast) but about an hour later, after being sealed with 4 top coats and a quick drying drops, the edges were starting to peel away from my nails. As I write this, the paint is actually flaking off the tape it's self, despite the top coat and all. 

Over at The Craft Patch though, she seemed to have had better luck than I did with this. Maybe the difference is thickly painted designs verses a large painted patch (I was planning on peeling it off, cutting in stripes, and laying them on my nails like that.)

So what do you think? Good idea or bad idea? Have any of my readers tried this before? Did it work better for you? Comment and let me know! 

Glow Sticks Lanterns

"Break open a glow stick, dump it in a jar, shake it up and you have an instant glow stick lantern! Perfect for outdoor parties. Could keep a few of these around for when the power goes out...fun in the dark"

This is one of those pins that verges on true, but misses the mark. The sheer amount of crazy glow stick pins is overwhelming, so I figured I'd start with the easiest - can you cut open a glow stick, dump it into a jar and get an easy lantern?

Sort of. Before trying this myself I read up a bit on it. The biggest complaint about this was that it didn't last long - something about the chemicals of glow sticks exposed to open air causes them to fad far quicker than if you leave them in the tube. 

So I decided to try it myself -  I wanted to see if it would glow well enough to replace candles and battery powered lanterns if the power went out, and just how long it would last. 

A quick trip to the dollar store and I had a fist full of glow sticks to play with. Now here is where I'd like to also mention that despite the fact glow sticks are labeled NON TOXIC, that doesn't mean breaking them open doesn't come with risks. and it's tricky to break them open - you basically have to cut one end, aim it towards the container, and then cut the other end to break the suction so it will flow freely into the container. There is a great article on the safety of glow sticks on Steve Spangler's blog, which you can read here. 

Despite knowing I shouldn't get this on my skin, it was a pain to try to get the liquid out and yes, some splattered on my skin and shirt. As fun as it was to look like an old school raver, it really did burn my skin a bit. Not eating away the skin or anything, but for sure you shouldn't be having young children do this project.

And there we have it - my jar. You can't really tell, but that is a tiny jar - about 3" inches total in size. I couldn't help myself and had to place it next to a dental casting I have because creepy is fun. 

But would this work if the power went out? Uh.. no. Not unless you feel like breaking open a LOT of glow sticks. Here's a photo I took midway into the room of the jar:

Yeah.. that's not lighting a whole lot of anything there. But hey, what about just using it for fun party or Halloween decorations? Well, I failed a bit at tracking the time on how long they last, as I figured it was late and I was tired, so I took a quick hour long nap. When I woke, I asked my husband where my jar was. "It's where you left it silly" ... oh. After just an hour the jar had already stopped glowing. So unless you're planning on a rather quick party, these aren't going to last the whole night through. The other glow sticks we had cracked for fun were still going strong though, and lasted about 4 hours before I went to bed.

All in all, though you can break open a glow stick and dump it in a jar, it's not going to last long, and it's sure not going to help when the power is out. You'd have better time just leaving it all IN the stick and playing with those. 

Heat Sealing Cellophane Bags

This is one of those that isn't THAT bad, but still had me puzzled -

Ok. So this isn't going to burn down your house or maim you. But unless you happen to have a curling or flat iron laying around you don't mind getting plastic burned into, it's probably best to skip this one. Not to mention the seal created by something like this isn't going to be the best. Ether buy something made to seal bags, or go the easy route and staple it. I've seen some really cute simple card stock topper ideas on pinterest for sealing bags: 

Not only would this look better, but can be sealed with with staples or double sided tape easily. Plus it would be a lot easier than trying to seal it with a curling iron.

How to Use an Elevator

I'm sure we've all seen this one -

Who wouldn't love this to be true? No longer will you have to wait a good 2 minutes.. maybe 5 minutes if you're heading to a rather upper floor and there are 10 people in the elevator with you all getting off at different floors. Are we not only that impatient but also that selfish to think we need to skip everyone else and go directly to our own floors?

Well it doesn't matter.. because it's false. It's not true at all. In fact The New Yorker even did quite a lovely write up on it, back in 2005 which you can read here.