Re: Ripley and a cuddly earth
For a while his Twitter profile had a photo of him in a dinner jacket and a fluffy white cat on his lap, ala Blofeld. He also had a photo of the time the CRS mission underwent a RUD (or as the author beautifully put it, when falcon went foom).
Both show a certain sense of humour, but I stopped following him after he went a bit nuts with the paedo submarine debacle. It might be with hung a look if he's settled down a bit now.