The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel founder, Dumisani Washington, has just published a second edition of his book. His son, Joshua Washington, has now taken over the reins of IBSI and also hosts an interesting podcast.
My mother’s family think I have lost my faith and they pray for me to recover it. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Other people, so I have read, are pious as children and later become skeptical (or, as they say on This I Believe: “in time I outgrew the creeds and dogmas of organized religion”). Not I. My unbelief was invincible from the beginning. I could never make head or tail of God. The proofs of God’s existence may have been true for all I know, but it didn’t make the slightest difference. If God himself had appeared to me, it would have changed nothing. In fact, I have only to hear the word God and a curtain comes down in my head.
Funksters Funk’n’stein have a new album out. Doin Fine is the lead single. Their most famous song All Day Long is below as well.
“Ain that fine. Whoa! I never go to school more than two year in my life. My momma out washing other people clothin, ain nobody talking about school. I spen all my time rollin tire aroun the street. I’m rollin, momma washing, nobody learning nothin. Shit! Who looking for a tire roller to give them a job? I end up gainfully employ working with a bird, got a boss probly selling Spanish fly to orphan. Ooo-wee”.
She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.
“The problem come from not havin no vocation skill,” Jones was saying to Mr. Watson. Jones was perched on a wooden stool, his legs bent under him like ice tongs ready to pick up the stool and boldly carry it away before Mr. Watson’s old eyes. “If I had some trainin I wouldn be mopping no old whore flo.”
On the 11th of February Denis Hilton passed away. He was a great cognitive psychologist who made important advancements in social cognition, decision making and behavioral finance. The Hilton-Slugoski model of causal attribution is considered one of the main pillars of causal reasoning. His analytical skill put him at the centre of the philosophical debate on causality and pragmatics. Denis collaborated for long time with the Herbert Simon Society as lecturer and as a member of Mind & Society.
