"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater." — J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
The Writers Who Wrote The Most in History. “Corin Tellado published more than 4,000 novels, mostly under a contract with Spanish publisher Bruguera, which obligated her to deliver a 76-page novel every single week for years.”
Twenty Square Meters. Everything You Actually Need.
Before aerodynamics were a defining feature of car design, Tatra was already building the most technically sophisticated vehicles in the world. The T87 arrived in 1936 with a wind-cheating body, a rear mounted air cooled magnesium V8, a backbone chassis, fully independent suspension at all four corners, and a drag coefficient of 0.36. In 1936. Ferdinand Porsche's Volkswagen shared so many of its principles that Tatra sued and won. Only 3,056 were built across the entire production run. Fewer than 250 are believed to survive.
This particular example, chassis 79317, has a history that reads like a Cold War novel. In 1976 a 24 year old German enthusiast crossed the Iron Curtain into Czechoslovakia and tracked the car down to an owner in Frydek Mistek who was still using it as a winter daily driver. Buying it was straightforward. Getting it out was not. An export tax equal to the car's value, two years of negotiations, and repeated border rejections later, the T87 finally crossed the Iron Curtain in 1979 under its own power, driving the 1,000 kilometres back to Hannover.
In 2001 the owner sent it home to the Czech Republic for a complete ground up restoration by ECORRA in Koprivnice, the world's foremost specialists in these machines. The original colour combination of dark green over green leather was confirmed through the Tatra factory museum. Custom leather was supplied by Aresma in Hamburg, period correct headlining and carpets sourced by the owner. Body, paint, and mechanicals were completely overhauled. Twenty three years after completion, the panel fitment and paint remain at a level that would embarrass many leading European restoration workshops.
The car passed to its second German owner in southern Bavaria in 2016 and has been carefully maintained and exercised since. It is now available through Schaltkulisse in Munich at an undisclosed price. Jay Leno, who owns one, has called the T87 the greatest car that nobody has ever heard of. That description is becoming harder to sustain as these machines increasingly command the attention their engineering always deserved.
1950 Tatra T87 Aerodynamic Saloon Restored by ECORRA
Part of it depends on whether they believe personality is fixed or constantly changing.
Scientist wins $100,000 prize for decoding birdsong
The Guardian: “A scientist who decoded the dictionary that a bird uses to communicate has won a $100,000 prize for making progress towards a world in which humans can talk to the animals – without being met with a blank response.
Dr Julie Elie at the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded the 2026 Coller-Dolittle prize for two-way interspecies communication after working out the 11 core calls in the zebra finch vocabulary and their meanings. Her work revealed how the birds announce who they are and what they are doing, and recognise one another regardless of what they are saying by using individual signatures.
She also found that at times, the birds confused calls with similar meanings more than those that sounded the same. “I’m really super-honoured,” Elie said on winning the prize, adding that she hoped the work was a step forwards in the “great endeavour” to communicate with animals. Prof Yossi Yovel, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University and chair of the panel of judges, said the work marked “a key moment in the field”.
The prize was launched in 2024 by the Jeremy Coller Foundation, which promotes awareness of animal welfare and animal sentience, in partnership with Tel Aviv University. Beyond the annual prizes for progress, the foundation has established a $10m grand prize for cracking the problem of two-way human-animal communication. Elie decided to study zebra finches because they are so vocal – meaning they produce plenty of data.
“The question I asked myself when hearing these chatty songbirds was what are they saying?” she said. For more than a decade, Elie observed and recorded the sounds the birds made and classified the calls according to the situation and the bird that made them.
She then used machine learning to analyse what and how information was encoded in the calls. Finally, she ran tests that showed the birds agreed with her classification…”
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