[Tutor] CPU Utilization

[DS]

I am implementing a computational cluster and am using a job controller
(for want of a better term) that contacts the worker computers,
determines how busy they currently are, and then assigns more work if
the worker computer is below a certain cpu utilization threshhold. 

For the cpu threshhold, I've been thinking I'd have the worker computer
shell out to perform the top command, parse the results, and report
those values to the job controller.

Is there a better way, or more pythonic, way to do this?

Thanks

ds