Happy Birthday Carl Sagan!

He would be 73 today. As Sagan was dying, he stressed the fact that his quasi-atheism did not make him fear death at all, but rather he was always overjoyed for having the opportunity to even briefly exist and experience at all. The world is a much happier place for his having existed.

Sagan’s many works, including his inspiring Cosmos series and his book Demon-Haunted World resulted in my personal ionian enchantement, where I fell in love with the natural world, shook off my own childish ideas about reality, and made science my number one cause.

Carl Sagan was also an avid pot smoker, which does nothing to detract from the brilliance of his writting, and everything to argue for decriminalizing marijuana use.