Labor Day
Monday, September 3, 2007, is the Labor Day holiday in the United States. Labor day occurs on the first Monday in September, and it's been a US holiday since an Act of Congress in 1894. Although there isn't a physical definition of "labor," there's a physical definition of work. It's the product of the force applied to a mass and the distance it's traveled
W = F•d
when the force is in the direction of the motion, and it has the units of energy. Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis (the same Coriolis as in the Coriolis Effect) established this formal definition of work in 1835, although the principle was stated by Laplace in his description of tidal forces in 1778. Of course, real life is not as simple as W = F•d, since forces are not always in line with the resultant motion, so slightly more complicated equations apply. Note that motion is required for work, so you can push on a wall all you want, but no real work is being done, unless you push the wall over.
I'm taking a break from holding up my office wall, and I'll be away from my office all of Labor Day week. My next blog will be posted on Monday, September 10, 2007. Until that time, enjoy the following quotations about work.
• Danilo Dolci - It's important to know that words† don't move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains.
†...or PowerPoint slides
• Thomas Alva Edison - Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
• Thomas Alva Edison - Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
• Barbara Ehrenreich - Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."
• Ralph Waldo Emerson - Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
• John W. Gardner - The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
• Victor Hugo - A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
• Thomas Jefferson - I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
• Helen Keller - The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
• Lane Kirkland - If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.
• Vince Lombardi - Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight, / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night.
• Francoise de Motteville - The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.
• Mark Twain - What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
References:
1. Quotations in various categories are available at wisdomquotes.com.
2. Wikiquote is another collection of quotations, including the following by Leonard Bernstein, "To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."