[ChuckMcM]

Sigh. And who are you going to inspire to study physics with those dry facts? :-) I wasn't going for depth here, shire could just goto google scholar or a decent physics library and follow the citation references off of Dr. Hawking's work if they want to pursue this in depth. I was shooting for a bit more pizazz than that :-).

It is a solid point though that the tidal forces on the event horizon of a really big black hole would be minimal. You'd be just as dead though. But I stand by my assertion that "Something pedantically accurate like 'nothing alive'" would be pretty boring and not really convey the interesting aspects of gravitational theory that result in singularities on what most folks consider "normal" space-time.

[pdonis]

I was shooting for a bit more pizazz than that :-).

Pizazz is fine, but not at the expense of truth.

You'd be just as dead though

Eventually, yes. Not at the horizon.

singularities on what most folks consider "normal" space-time.

There is a singularity at the "center" of the black hole, yes. (I put "center" in scare-quotes because a black hole doesn't have a "center" in the usual sense; but we don't have a better word for it.) But not at the horizon.