1. Yes

2. No

3. Are you sure you kids are from Harvard?

The real answers:

1. "Do it."

2. Hawking "believes" in the physcial laws of the Universe and something
like Einstein's non-personal God.

3. I don't recall the answers to "the black stuff between the stars"
because I think I spent too much time complaining to my wife about
how these suppsoed Harvard students were given such an important
opportuntiy and blew it.

I also got the deep impression that the majority of the people present
were there to see Hawking and whatever he said was secondary. HOW
he said it was another matter, of course.

His lecture was funny at times (he showed his cameos on The Simpsons
and Star Trek) but vassilated between giving really simple explanations
and then going way over the audiences' head. But they weren't there
for the astronomy lecture. Of course I wanted to see Hawking in person,
too, but I think he had an opportunity to teach some good basic cosmology
and didn't quite take the right advantage of the situation.