Curtis sent me a great article written by Roger Ebert about Christopher Hitchens and his "battle" with cancer. I use the word 'battle' loosely as Hitchens self describes it as the farthest thing from battling or fighting. It's a boring lonely process that you're just vaguely a part of while those around you try to keep things as chipper and light as possible. In the meantime, he remains hopeful but not without being realistic about his odds.
Whether you're a follower or hater of Hitchens, no one can deny that the man is nothing short of a genius and might actually be the most interesting man on earth, sorry Dos Equis.
As Ebert describes him in his article, he mentions that he's a good speaker and that he never says anything just for the sake of saying something. And I love that about him. As smart as he is, he could probably back up and defend any inflated comment he could come up with, but instead he has the intellect and patience not to. While religious fundamentalists scream obscenities at him, organize prayer groups for his demise and loonies take time to write him hate mail, he sits back and watches his arguments unfold around him as the masses remain oblivious. Your religion doesn't believe in killing, but that murderous letter you wrote him proves otherwise. Your religion claims that your god gave you free will, but obviously not free thought or you'd let him speak his mind.
While I could go on for ages why I find Hitchens so fascinating, and more recently Roger Ebert for that matter , I'll stop and just post this video of Hitchens being waterboarded testing for himself what it's like. To be honest, before actually seeing the procedure or whatever you want to call it, I thought it barely skirted on the border of torture, but as Hitchens describes it afterwards, there is no gray area, it's most definitely tortureous and inhumane.
Here's the article by Ebert:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/08/traveler_to_the_undiscovered_c.html
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