Beauty
The world's most beautiful math equation, by Richard A. Friedman. A professor of clinical psychiatry discusses what happens in the brains of mathematicians as they gaze upon (and think about) mathematical equations. And the most beautiful is....
Classical Education: Colleges
The most contrarian college in America, by Frank Bruni. The columnist pays a visit to St. John's College, where students follow a classical curriculum that sounds eerily familiar....
Classical Education: Poetry & Music
The Streets of Rome: The classical Dylan, by Richard F. Thomas. Scholarly article by a Harvard classics professor who teaches a seminar entitled "Bob Dylan 101" that concerns the music, lyrics, and other writings of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
Competitive Mathematics
Math champion wins with answer about pecking chicks, by Christopher Mele. Article about the 2017 MATHCOUNTS middle-school mathematics championship. Can you solve the problem? Here it is:
In a barn, 100 chicks sit peacefully in a circle. Suddenly, each chick randomly pecks the chick immediately to its left or right. What is the expected number of unpecked chicks?
Driving
The Geometry of Perfect Parking, by Simon R. Blackburn. The author explains how to parallel park using high-school geometry.
Sports
On Uniform No. 0, the Yankees Rule Out Nothing, by Tyler Kepner. With the retirement of Derek Jeter's uniform number 2, no single digit remains for future New York Yankees--unless...? No one has yet had the number 0. Is zero a valid number for a baseball player?