I stopped in to see how my sacred cows were holding up. Looks like they haven't been in danger for several pages now. But I'm sorry Jd, I can't let this one fly.
There's a certain amount of irony going on here. "Mechanic" is one of two things: a "mechanism" and used correctly, or a "rule" and used incorrectly. The irony is that I believe in many cases, "mechanic" is the lazy man's version of " mechanism, " because it's shorter by one syllable. Why the lazy man (don't worry, he's a friend of mine) doesn't just say "rule," because it's shorter still, is beyond me.