Here is my OP-ED on The Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook page:
Every 40 years or so, five major planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter) form a single line in the sky. In ancient China, people believed that this phenomenon signaled the imminent arrival of a major, and usually unfortunate, event. Last weekend, a joke circulated on the Chinese blogosphere: When five major state-run newspapers run identical front pages, what does it portend? [Full Text]