cosmic calendar

Thanks to Timothy (Friendly Humanist) Mills for putting together a Google Calendar version of Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar. It's a great dramatic device, as it maps the 13.7-billion-year history of the universe onto our familiar 365-day calendar.

From the Cambrian Explosion (540 million years ago, on 17 December) to the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, the last two weeks of the year are quite busy--especially once we reach written history, which occupies the last minute before midnight. If you're looking for a delightfully geeky way to secularize the traditionally religious December holiday season, you could do much worse than celebrate a few Cosmic Calendar holidays.