Stick it to me

After I got past all the war with Iraq, war with North Korea, and war with anybody else whose name George W. can’t pronounce stories, I found an interesting article on CNN about Manual vs. Automatic transmissions. The article itself wasn’t all that great, it was pretty much the same old arguments of sticks are more reliable and get better gas milage vs. automatics leave your gun hand free. The part that caught my attention was this:

Prior to the 1974 endangered species act, automatic transmissions were filled with fluid that was 95 percent sperm whale oil…

I’ve never heard anything like that before, and I worked for an oil company for over 5 years. Oh well, live and learn.