Today is Carl Sagan’s birthday, which, if there were any justice in the world, would be celebrated in the fashion we’ve become accustomed to for nerds of note — with a Google Doodle commemorating the day that one of the world’s best and brightest science celebrities was expelled from the womb. As there is clearly no justice in the world, though, Sagan’s birthday was overlooked by Google’s legions of doodlers, who were no doubt exhausted by celebrating Bram Stoker’s big 165 yesterday. I don’t think we need to tell you why this is clearly unacceptable. Someone at Google has some explaining to do over this egregious oversight, but that’s not going to keep us from celebrating Sagan’s birthday, and we hope you’ll join us.
While Google may be snubbing one of our favorite scientists, we at Geekosystem still consider it our duty to in some small way honor the birth of a man who did as much as anyone in the history of the planet to increase popular understanding of science and elucidate the sense of wonder that science should always hold. The brilliant scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author is one of those people we’d despise for being too damn talented if he hadn’t put his talent to such extraordinary and noble pursuits.
While you probably can’t swing watching the entire run of Sagan’s classic PBS series Cosmos on Netflix at work today, we would urge you to pay a visit to our fellow Sagan-philes at The Sagan Series today and wish him a happy one, even if it is all too posthumously. These short videos by Sagan admirer Reid Gower do a great job of paying homage to the celebrated astronomer and author every day, even if Google isn’t going to give the man his due. You can check out one of our favorites below, but we highly recommend going wall to wall on these today, which you can do easily on YouTube. There’s not a bad one in the bunch, and can’t think of a better way to celebrate Sagan’s birthday.
If you’ve got time to dig into a book this weekend, we’d also call your attention to a couple of Sagan’s literary works. There are plenty to choose from, like The Dragons of Eden, his award-winning treatise on the evolution of intelligence, and Pale Blue Dot, which we’d put up as one of the great philosophical works of the modern era. For our money, though, you just can’t beat the posthumously published The Varieties of Scientific Experience.
However you do it, we hope you’ll join us in saying Happy Birthday, Carl — wherever you are now.
- If anyone is going to reboot Cosoms, it had better be Neil deGrasse Tyson
- This animated take on Pale Blue Dot is a very worthy adaptation
- See more about The Sagan Series here
