‘Trump fired a tariff torpedo at China — and hit Boeing right between the eyes’
Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times
The “latest skirmish between Trump and China has painted a target on this nation’s most important manufacturing exporter: Boeing,” says Michael Hiltzik. China “ordered the country’s airlines not to place new orders for Boeing aircraft,” and the “size of the blow China struck against Boeing is hard to measure.” Boeing’s “plight is just one aspect of a White House tariff policy that increasingly resembles, as Shakespeare might have put it, ‘a tale told by an idiot.'”
‘How likely is it that bird flu will spread to humans on a mass scale?’
Robert A. Weinstein and Cory Franklin at the Chicago Tribune
Fears of a “bird flu pandemic have not materialized, and there is less cause for worry than there was in the winter,” say Robert A. Weinstein and Cory Franklin. But the “most feared scenario is a major recombination genetic event — the flu virus drastically reshuffles its genes in its hosts.” So “surveillance must occur where the virus might be present: in raw milk and food, wastewater, animal and bird die-offs, specimens from zoo animals with flu-like illnesses and veterinary settings.”
‘The cultural heresy of “Sinners”‘
Armond White at the National Review
The “Black blues/vampire hybrid ‘Sinners’ mimics a mixed-genre Tarantino bash,” says Armond White. The film “exploits the blues without accounting for its compelling folkloric qualities that contributed to the exceptionalism of American popular culture.” The “one-dimensional rehash of Black American history degrades the legacy of the Southern blues.” The “juxtaposition of vampire/tribal debauches revives the irresolvable racism that lay at the heart of Americana.” The film is “hip-hop juvenilia for the millennium, minimizing Black culture.”
‘The most underrated culinary ingredient is nature’s pairing to eggs. Too bad we’re terrified of it.’
Christina Cauterucci at Slate
Eggs, the “biological opposite of sperm, are a staple of American cuisine,” says Christina Cauterucci. We “depend on and delight in the consumption of one variety of animal gametes. Why don’t we eat the other?” It “makes sense that mammal sperm is a no-go,” but it is “eaten as a standard food item in a diverse array of cultures around the world.” Once you “wipe the cobwebs of orgasmic association from your head, fish sperm tastes pretty darn good.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day