Christopher Hitchens was granted the Richard Dawkins Award tonight at the Texas Freethought Convention. He was looking frail and thin, his voice was husky, but he was amazingly strong. He gave a wonderful, fiery, eloquent acceptance speech, and then he took questions for almost an hour — and he was willing to go on longer and seemed grateful for an opportunity to talk to the public again. He was fierce, courageous, and well-spoken as always, and kept the audience awed and inspired the whole time.

I’m actually optimistic that we’ll see him again in Melbourne for the Global Atheist Convention. I’ll put his talk up as soon as I see it appear on youtube, as I’m sure it will soon enough.