hitch slap

Say what you like about Christopher Hitchens, but he's certainly not wallowing in self-pity after the diagnosis of oesophageal cancer and its exceptionally grim prognosis a few months ago. In fact if anything he's stepped up his schedule, including an impressive but exhausting round of public debates with idiots, including Intelligent Design advocate Bill Dembski, ex-Prime Minister and increasingly scary orange bloke Tony Blair and philosopher, mathematician and massive gibbering cock David Berlinski.

• Part 1 of the Dembski debate is here - turns out Dembski is an idiot. Who knew?
• Part 1 of the Berlinski debate is here - turns out Berlinski is an idiot.
• Part 1 of the Blair debate is here - turns out, well, you get the idea.

Here's a couple of interesting Independent articles from the run-up to the Blair debate - the first a really tremendously vacuous one by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (who has a bit of previous in this department), the second slightly more interesting.

A couple of further links I commend to you: an interesting recent Guardian piece and an interview of Hitchens by Jeremy Paxman for Newsnight. It's probably sentimentality at the prospect of his likely imminent death (and he does seem a bit more reflective and less polemical in these two interviews), and it's true he does talk a load of old cock from time to time, but I find myself finding Hitch increasingly cherishable - as his RationalWiki page says:

Christopher Eric Hitchens is what every self-respecting gentleman aspires to be, viz. a drunken, chain-smoking, atheistic, foul-mouthed, British smartarse.

On that subject here's Hitch on drink. Wise words. Incidentally the Hitchens caricature above is from this excellent series from Crispian Jago's blog.