gears and tipping points

Today I mostly learned about transmissions of Whirlpool/Kenmore direct drive washing machines. They take 90 weight gear oil, and when all the gears are covered in ancient oil, even the plastic one looks like it could have been metal until you touch it. I'd explain about the other plastic parts in there, but then I'd have to start using the number system on that diagram I linked to, and, as the manual indicates, playing around in the transmission is not a project for laypeople, but as nerds, we don't care. For the record, I'm well enough to be able to understand complicated stuff if my husband explains it to me, but if I'd had to figure out that transmission by myself, there would have been a problem, only part of which would have been the VOCs coming out of the old gear oil.

But I'm also well enough to find out that you can get denim at WalMart for $2/yard, and the lady there said the reason WalMart is closing its fabric departments is that they're only making about thirteen cents per yard, which, if you think about it, makes sense if you're only charging $2/yard for denim. So WalMart is actually putting a little piece of itself out of business by having low prices.

Other than that, 'tipping point' is like the new black, in that everybody is using it for everything. It appears twice in this article about Don Imus getting fired, and Arnie managed to use it seven times giving some speech we were too tired to read, along with the words tip, tips, tipping, and a tipping factor for good measure.