Google has gotten pretty crazy with the home-page themes the last year or so — high point being that Jules Verne steam-punk masterpiece — and we're mostly supportive of the company's choice honorees.

But today is different. Today is Cesar Chavez Day. And to whom does Google pay tribute, in its illegible (albeit adorable) doodle?

Robert freaking Bunsen.

Don't get us wrong. Lab science would be a bust without bunsen burners, and high-school chemistry would have been 100 times less engaging/hair-inflaming. Its inventor was a German genius, and a gift to the world.

But Cesar Chavez? Come on. He's a civil-rights hero — right up there with Martin Luther King — and especially so in California, where Google makes its “Googleplex” home. Seven other states also celebrate Cesar Chavez Day as a holiday, as well they should.

But it's apparently not good enough for the almighty Internet demi-god, who seems to value ancient chemistry over the plight of the underpaid worker.

What a bunch of nerds.

We admit, for your average Google staffer, animating a mad scientist's chain o' reactions is a more attractive prospect than recreating the classic ethnic mural, all somber brown visages and colors of the wind. But tough luck. Chavez deserves his day on our home pages, even more so amid the current war on both Latinos and unions in America.

The man invented the phrase “Si se puede,” for christ's sake. Bunsen can bear to take the back burner on this one.

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]

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