  Many things in mathematics seem lamost unreasonably nice. This includes
objects, counterexamples, proofs. In this preprint I discuss many examples of
this phenomenon with emphasis on the ring of polynomials in a countably
infinite number of variables in its many incarnations such as the representing
object of the Witt vectors, the direct sum of the rings of representations of
the symmetric groups, the free lambda ring on one generator, the homology and
cohomology of the classifying space BU, ... . In addition attention is paid to
the phenomenon that solutions to universal problems (adjoint functors) tend to
pick up extra structure.

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