Christopher Hitchens has made a short list of things he'd like to see before cancer or some other unforeseen malady dictates the final chapter of his life. The list gets The Propagandist seal of approval:

Hitchens says that as he thinks about the rest of his life, he thinks about the books he'd still like to write, time with his three children — and how he should spend it. And he thinks of the obituaries he'd like to write, listing Robert Mugabe. Joseph Ratzinger. Henry Kissinger.

 

"It does gash me to think that people like that would outlive me, I have to say," he says. "It really does."

 

And he mentions other things he'd like to live to see: the end of the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea, Osama bin Laden on trial, the World Trade Center rebuilt. Hitchens measures his own time, against the world.