I came across this post on Gizmodo [1] today, with the following video:
Stripped by a Mechanical Shovel! – video powered by Metacafe [2]
Years ago, when I still lived on an acreage, we had a delivery of bricks for the construction of our retaining wall. The delivery truck had a little crane on it, and the guy used the crane to drop the eight or nine pallets of bricks with elegant precision and near-total economy of motion. It was a small thing, but I doubt the worker realized just how impressive his skill was. Likewise, we had a fellow do some Bobcat work on the front half-acre of our yard, and there was nary a missed step as tons of dirt was shifted and ground levels adjusted to control the flow of water across our property. The merger between human and machine was nearly poetic.
I admire the skills of these ballet masters of the mechanical- a testimony to the ability of humans to turn the mundane into something of beauty.