Solar eclipse 2017

On August 21, 2017, there will be a solar eclipse occurring coast to coast across the continental United States. The last time this happened was almost a century ago in 1918. This has two effects on states that generate a lot of solar energy: the solar energy generated decreases during an Eclipse and people turn on their lights as the sky darkens. Both of these events stress the utility grid.  California's utilities are asking people not to turn on the lights during this event. I am surprised such a short event (and California is not even in the path of totality) can cause concerns for power utilities operators. I wonder if something similar happens when there is no wind in the summer and more people turn on their fans to cool off?

Happy Yellow Pig Day!

Today, July 17 is Yellow Pig Day. This "holiday" was created by Princeton math students Michael Spivak and David C. Kelly when they were analyzing the number 17 and wanted to have a day to celebrate this number. This year (2017) is extra special since the year also ends in the digits 17.
Michael Spivak is the author of the wonderful differential geometry texts (published by Publish-or-Perish Press which he founded) which I fondly remember reading in graduate school. He also wrote a popular typesetting book on TeX which I did not read since Leslie Lamport's book on LaTeX makes typesetting papers using LaTeX so easy that I have skipped learning TeX and went straight to using LaTeX (which sits on top of TeX).
If I remember correctly, the typesetting software I used prior to LaTeX was ChiWriter, which is quite easy to use as it is WYSIWYG, so moving to a typesetting paradigm where you relinquish control on the formatting, page breaks, etc. to the software is quite unnerving, but I soon learn to appreciate it as I can focus on the content of the document, rather than spend time improving its appearance.