In the World

ProPublica has been doing a series of reports about the Red Cross’s misleading rhetoric about how it uses donations: The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors' money. "We're very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that's donated goes to our services," Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year. "That's world class, obviously."

These are wise words from Chris Rock, words that bring to mind the point often made by Ta-Nehisi Coates, among others: that while race may be a construct, this doesn’t change the all-too-clear reality of racism. 

I'm not a big fan of Adele's music, but this week I'm a huge fan of her as a human being. Bob Geldof was assembling a bunch of celebrities to relive that "Do They Know It's Christmas?" glory 30 years later, but for Ebola this time. Never mind that a lot of people in Europe and North America have gotten a little more self critical in recent decades about things like paternalism, white-savior complexes, and the fact that Africa isn't one big country of backward horribleness.

Last night, Congress came within a single senator's vote of passing legislation to authorize a major crude oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico that would pump more than 830,000 barrels of high-polluting tar sands oil a day and carry and emit 51 coal plants worth of CO2 (pdf)—despite the fact that U.S. oil demand is falling and, you know, the planet is burning up—in exchange for 35 whole permanent jobs. I'm sorry, I buried the lede: what I meant to say is that the runoff Senate race in Louisiana hasn't happened yet.

Last week while I was away, Tobin Grant linked to something interesting: new research, based on 40 years of General Social Surveys, that echoes Grant's own parsing of Pew's Religious Landscapes Survey.

One reason I haven't posted in a while is that my role as the Century's webmaster has sort of taken over my job in recent weeks, as we've made what ended up being a pretty bumpy server move. Another reason is that my train commute—aka "when editors actually write something"—has lately been dominated by the MA thesis I'm working on for my seminary degree.

I like Michael Gerson's writing, and sometimes I even agree with the things he says. This week he wrote a sensitive and heartfelt column about one of the houses in the DC-area L'Arche community—a place I feel some small connection to, as my wife was once part of a different house in the same community.

In case you’re not up on your celebrity news, Shia LaBeouf recently told Interview magazine that he “became a Christian man” on the set of Fury, in which he plays an evangelical soldier. Yay, another high-profile believer! Well, maybe.

Did you hear about the for-profit wedding chapel owners in Idaho who are claiming a constitutional right (pdf) to refuse services to same-sex couples? From Marci Glass's entertaining post: I hate to be the one to point this out to the Reverends Knapp, but they are not, in fact, pastors of a church. They own a wedding mill.

Shorter Peter Berger: Sometimes when liberals make public advocacy statements, they use the phrase “speaking truth to power.” This started in the 50s and got irritating by the 70s.