mechanician

Properly sharpening a chisel blade on a stone is an art.

I agree with the above, but exact number of hours aside, do you think there could be some validity to the article, akin to a Pareto principle?

Professor Bart Kosko at USC is an active publisher in this area.

Example: sipi.usc.edu/~kosko/TSP_May2009.pdf

Rumor aside, I'm surprised in general that ARM's stock has risen so much in the last year. I suppose the increase in price is due to the current, and anticipated, use of ARM designs in mobile devices. Still, in the long run would ARM really be able to maintain it's lower-power chip dominance over Intel? I know Intel isn't there yet, but they seem to be a fearsome R&D competitor.

This topic seems to come up quite often. I personally don't know whether an investment banker contributes more to society than a motor engineer. However the expected income for the i-banker seems to be higher. I.e. this is an incentive problem. People can talk all they want about the intrinsic satisfaction in producing actual goods, but at the end of the day we all need to pay rent, eat, pay back student loans, and spring for the occasional round of drinks.