Wednesday, April 5, 2017

additional items

1. As a Honda owner, I got an e-mail a while back inviting me to test-drive their hydrogen fuel-cell car, the Clarity. I went to this a few weeks ago. Fuel-cell technology is old; the trick was making one small enough and reliable enough to use in a car. They seem to have done this, and the car is fun to drive. It's also surprisingly inexpensive to lease (no outright sales), as they're trying to build up the numbers so as to encourage the building of infrastructure, i.e. fueling stations. So far there are stations around California from Sacramento and Truckee to San Diego, which with a 350-mile range is enough to get you around most of the state except the far north and the eastern deserts. I went to this out of curiosity, but if I were looking for a new car, I'd consider this, except for one thing: they only have a luxury model, which I don't want.

2. Hugo finalists came out yesterday. There are still a few Puppies disfiguring the ballot, but not many, and the Puppy-inspired drop in female finalists has been entirely reversed: out of 24 fiction candidates, 17 are by women: 71%, the highest ever. Looks like we won the war on this front.

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