Stephen Hawking

I've always had a sort of inexplicable liking for this guy, perhaps because of the heroic combination of handicap and genius. He just always seemed to me the right sort of scientist. Instapundit reports that he's receiving a free, zero-gravity ride out of Cape Canaveral.

Peter H. Diamandis, chief executive of Zero G, said that "the idea of giving the world's expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity" was irresistible.

Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse - so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.