Christopher Hitchens, noted atheist and writer par excellence, has cancer.

“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” the ever-articulate Hitchens writes in the September issue of Vanity Fair. He concludes:

Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if—as my father invariably said—I am spared.

His essay is a mix of stoicism and dry British wit, but with an understated gravity

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It is no security to a natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages, shows this is no evidence, that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world.

—Jonathan Edwards

Dr. Randy Pausch may have come to your attention during the past year. At Carnegie Mellon University, he delivered a now-famous “Last Lecture” about fulfilling your childhood dreams, and it

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