Zombie has the story at PJM:

Obama waving-hand gaffe picture NOT a hoax or a Photoshop after all!

Over the last few hours a photo has begun to circulate on the blogs showing Obama supposedly at the “Open Government Partnership” conference today committing an egregious gaffe by raising his hand to block the face of another world leader.
[…]
So, following the lead in the image’s credit line — “Allan Tannenbaum-Pool / Getty Images” — I went straight to the supposed source…and to my utter astonishment, I discovered that the image is indeed from Getty Images and can be found on their site:

Getty Images — Title: Obama Meets With World Leaders At The United Nations

Here’s how it appears on the Getty Images page, with their watermark over the picture:

And here’s the official Getty caption:

Caption: NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 20: U.S. President Barack Obama waves while standing with aother leaders during the Open Government Partnership event at the United Nations September 20, 2011 in New York City.

It still looks fake to me, but that would mean that Getty itself is now putting out faked photos — which is extremely unlikely, especially after the number of times other news wire services were burned by untrustworthy stringers.

The image’s authenticity is further confirmed by the existence on the Getty site — which serves as sort of a “raw feed” of news photos which subscribing editors can browse through — of an “alternate take” photo showing a slight close-up of Obama in the group shot, this time with his hand not blocking his neighbor’s face.
[…]
Read it all.

Now this is embarrassing.

Not only for President Elbegdorj, but for the citizenry of the US.

If you are as dumbfounded and ashamed by the behavior of Barack Hussein Obama as I am, there is something that you can do.

PJM: New “Sorry Everybody” campaign: Apologize on Obama’s behalf to the President of Mongolia

Remember the “Sorry Everybody” campaign during the Bush era in which Americans were encouraged to apologize to the world for having such an idiot president?

Well, time for an update. As we noted yesterday, Obama embarrassed himself — and, by extension, the rest of the nation — by holding up his hand and blocking the face of Mongolian president Tsakhia Elbegdorj during a photo shoot at the UN:

So far, the White House has not yet issued a formal apology to Mr. Elbegdorj. So let’s take the matter into our own hands and apologize ourselves!

This page allows you to send emails directly to the Mongolian President:
[…]
Since Obama won’t apologize for his gaffe, we must apologize for him.

Please use the form to write a respectful letter of apology to President Elbegdorj, explaining why you think Obama felt it necessary to insult the leader of a sovereign nation.

…And of course, feel free to re-post your apology letter here (just like in the original “Sorry Everybody” campaign)!

Click here to read the rest, and write your own letter!

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear President Elbegdorj:

I apologize for President Barack Hussein Obama’s rude behavior in putting his hand in front of your face in a recent group photograph.

President Obama is a rude, ignorant, selfish, and thoughtless person. So were we, as a people, for allowing him to serve in public office in any capacity. Even though I did not vote for him, I take responsibility as an American citizen, and I apologize.

It’s that day again…

The 1389 Blog team, myself included, has been putting up some grim fare on the blog lately, on the topic of man’s inhumanity to man. Some of it is too over-the-top horrifying to re-post on Blogmocracy. It has to be fully documented with photos, videos and eyewitness narratives, because nobody would believe it otherwise.

Suffice it to say that this effort has not put me into much of a mindset to do the usual Caturday post. I know what kind of nightmares I can expect to have tonight. I was tempted to claim that the dog ate my homework, and just let Caturday go for the week, but thought better of it on the grounds that we really need to lighten things up a bit.

At least I did tear myself away from the computer long enough to feed El Gato and La Gata. No, unlike the white cat gracefully rolling off the table, they don’t come running at the sound of an electric can opener, mainly because we live in a motorhome and have no room for such things. I don’t see the point of spending money on bulky motorized tools for tasks I can perform just as easily by hand. And nearly all cat food cans these days have pull-tab tops anyway.

This animated .gif shows flagrant misuse of office supplies to torment an unfortunate kitty. This kitty may start looking for ways to make the human’s office supplies disappear.

Just sayin’.

 
In this B&W .gif, the dog pounces on the cat, and the cat chases him down the road. It’s just some harmless play-fighting; good exercise for feline and canine friends. This is a mother dog who is feeding a nest of puppies somewhere; maybe she needs a break!
 

 
From a Russian site:

Watch this fluffy orange cat run on his hind legs!
 

Have you ever changed your bed linens, only to find that your cat has gotten between your mattress and your fitted sheet? This is how it looks like from the cat’s perspective!

The TrollCats photoblog is a dark and edgy satire of more innocent cat photo comedy sites, including the world-famous I Can Has Cheezburger? Lolcats site. Much of TrollCats is definitely NSFW (not safe for work) on account of raw language and at least one instance of hardcore human nudity; hence their tagline “Definitely Offensive. Possibly Funny.”

As everybody knows by now, I LIKE material that is offensive in the sense of politically incorrect. So here we go:

Time to make the Democrats squirm trollcat

Every cloud has a…

Nonetheless, I omitted what were perhaps the funniest items on TrollCats from this post. Why? Simply because this post will appear on 1389 Blog and I feel obligated to uphold our own policy against swear words and explicit sex. Not that I’m a prude, but I don’t want to risk having 1389 Blog automatically blacklisted by content-filtering or “censorware” services on account of raw language and photos. So if you want to see the rude (but funny) stuff, you’ll have to visit TrollCats and find it on your own.

Hang on just let me wash my paws and check the locks one more time

Doesn’t really qualify as a worthwhile contribution to our dialog

Full-body tiger paint

Courtesy of Zombie, we have the World Naked Bike Ride, San Francisco. The version at the link is “censored” in a hilarious manner, but contains a link to the raw, uncensored version. Featured are Weiners, wieners, and a nekkid guy in full-body tiger paint, who apparently is one of the event’s organizers.

Cats at Mount Athos (Agion Oros) Greece by PAVEL13 – click thumbnail to see original

A trip back — way back — to Mt. Athos and the 10th century

Written by a non-Orthodox pilgrim – a good article from an outsider’s perspective.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007
By Neil Averitt, Chicago Tribune

Welcome to the Monastic Republic of Holy Mt. Athos. Please set your calendar back a thousand years.

Clocks here run on Byzantine time, which starts at sunset. Dates are calculated according to the Julian calendar of the Roman Empire, which differs by 13 days from the modern Gregorian calendar you’re used to. Some settlements are supplied solely by mule teams, and the flag of Byzantium still flies.

Radio? Television? Newspapers? Paved roads? If they didn’t exist in the year 972, you probably won’t find them here.

And if you’re a woman, you’d better make other plans. Females have been strictly forbidden here for a thousand years. Not even female animals are permitted.

[The author is unaware that there is an exception for cats, "who seem to prove useful in controlling the rat population".]

Mt. Athos is an Eastern Orthodox monastic republic and, astonishingly, a surviving administrative unit of the Byzantine Empire — a fully functioning mini-state with roads, settlements and a capital city, all operating under a charter granted by the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople in 972.

That world is preserved here in great detail and texture. Clothes, music, roads, public fountains, aqueducts, arched stone bridges, vegetable plots — all are from another age. Even the shiniest new chapel is built with traditional Byzantine-style brickwork, the product of a living culture.

Legally speaking, Mt. Athos is an autonomous region in northeast Greece, with most characteristics of an independent state. Visitors must show passports on the way in and undergo customs inspections on the way out.

Psychologically and geographically speaking, it’s a world apart. It’s perched on a hilly, heavily forested peninsula — 6 miles wide and 35 miles long — which terminates in the peak of Mt. Athos itself, a sharply pointed, bare rock, 6,700 feet high, that drops steeply into the Aegean. Scattered over this rugged landscape are 20 large monasteries, a dozen smaller communities, innumerable hermitages and 2,000 monks. The whole place is reachable only by boat.

Read the rest.

Where is Mount Athos?

Map of Greece with Mount Athos shown in red

Satellite map of Mount Athos – click to view larger image

Click these tiny thumbnails to view some truly magnificent photostreams:

More:

• The Friends of Mount Athos (Facebook)
• The Friends of Mount Athos Website
• Mount Athos at Monachos.net
• Mount Athos on Kosovo.net
• Prayer and Harvest on Mount Athos

Does anybody know where this photo came from?

Where did the rescue take place? Who is the firefighter? What type of cat is this?

Update:

Brick says:

If you google images – fireman rescues cat russia – it’s the second image listed. The DU track puts this pic online fall of 2009. The russia track puts it online prior to Jan of 2006.

I found this comment on the Museum of Hoaxes site, which considers the image to be real and not a hoax:

The expression on this cat’s face is pretty wild, but I don’t see any evidence of photoshopping. I found the image on this Russian livejournal site, so I’m guessing it might be a Russian fireman who just saved the cat.

But then, when I followed the above Russian Livejournal link, the photo image no longer appeared.

If the rescue indeed took place in Russia, then the cat is most likely a Siberian cat.

Bunk X says:

“Tineye comes up with 116 matches for that image.”

The Know Your Meme site suggests that the cat was “supposedly rescued from an air vent.”

Does anyone have more information about this photo?

Dan’s Data Reviews Juvenile Felis catus

(excerpt)

Compatibility with existing hardware

No significant points of incompatibility have been found between the new kitten and my existing equipment. A box with some old cables in it has been slept in. My monitor and mouse pad have been sat on. My keyboard has been walked on, but not seriously enough to justify intervention.

NOTE: Kittens do not have any computer-compatible ports. Don’t try to plug anything into them. I’m serious.

Also: If you’re waiting for me to make some kind of “mouse” joke here, you can just keep on waiting…

Read it all.

Here’s Tom, another cat belonging to Dan:

PawSense intercepts “cat typing”

Note: I have not tried this product myself, because our cat is of mature years and seldom gets on the keyboard. If you have used this product and have any opinion on it either way, you are invited to comment here.

From the site:

When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.

PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard.

• Every time your computer boots up, PawSense will automatically start up in the background to watch over your computer system.
• Even while you use your other software, PawSense constantly monitors keyboard activity. PawSense analyzes keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing. PawSense normally recognizes a cat on the keyboard within one or two pawsteps.
• If a cat gets on the keyboard, PawSense makes a sound that annoys cats. This teaches your cat that getting on the keyboard is bad even if humans aren’t watching.
• Once a cat has been recognized, PawSense blocks the cat’s keyboard input. This keeps the cat from entering lots of commands to your programs or operating system…

To get back into your computer, you can either select the appropriate button with your mouse and click it, or type human in the text box to prove that you are one.

Here are a few cat smileys: =^..^=

Click here to view the embedded video.

From Lily:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bonus kitty pic of Buffy – provided by NoThreat2U:

Originally posted on 2.0: The Blogmocracy

Tokyo’s Cat Cafes

TOKYO — I followed the instructions of the watchful cashier and took off my shoes, sanitized my hands, placed my bag in a locker and dangled an ID card (“customer #18”) from a lanyard around my neck. The cashier then gave me a once over and a shallow bow, and I padded quietly into the sitting room of the cafe.

“She’s the prettiest girl we have at our cafe. Everybody wants to touch her, but we ask that customers only do so if she doesn’t resist you,” a waitress told me.

She didn’t resist. And since I was paying for the privilege, I leaned in and stroked her cheek. She was as lovely as the waitress had promised: a big-eyed, silky soft, compliant 2-year-old Russian Blue cat.

I was at Calico, one of Tokyo’s increasingly popular cat cafes, where customers seeking human and feline companionship pay to sip tea and stroke one of the 20-odd resident cats, representing 17 different breeds…

Read the rest.

Cat Fancy: American Girl Meets Hello, Kitty

TOKYO, Japan — It’s like American Girl meets Hello, Kitty.

Cats in kimono. Cats dressed in red curls like Anne of Green Gables. Cats posing in Napoleon hats. Cats in tiaras. Cats in black lace.

Cat costumes created and sold by Takako Iwasa of Tokyo are creative, clever and catastrophically funny…

Read the rest.

Originally posted on 2.0: The Blogmocracy

YouTube: Tom Jones sings ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’

Click here to view the embedded video.

More Kitty Cuteness (h/t JohannaLatin)

Originally posted on 2.0: The Blogmocracy

(h/t JohannaLatin)

Originally published on 2.0: The Blogmocracy

This is a tribute to the feline friends of the blogging community:

Here’s Tom, a cute kitten belonging to the parents of Natasha.

More about Tom here and here.

This is Tempy, the favorite cat of Heather Ives a/k/a WebKittyn.

I met this kitty on the food blog Palachinka, while I was looking for more information on шљи̏вовица, a/k/a rakija:

Be sure to read the article itself, an illustrated guide to making šljivovica.

Update: Here’s F‘s beloved cat, T.C.:

Cat photos from mfhorn of Blogmocracy:

Emily

Ferguson

Angel and Ferguson

Angel as a kitten

Cat photo from snork of Blogmocracy:

Snork the cat

Finally, here’s Conservative Cat from icanhascheezburger.com:

…the sun is about to set.

As you already know, I had little to say about the 2008 US presidential election because, then as now, I regarded both of the candidates, and all their pomps and all their works, as beneath comment.

Even before the election, it was obvious to me that the winning candidate would someday deeply regret having run for that office. Let me go on record that I stand by that prediction.

It has often been claimed that no one can win a thermonuclear war. Be that as it may, there is no question that it is easy enough to lose one! In similar fashion, becoming president of the US at this time is just as clearly a no-win scenario for the perpetrator and all his retinue.

Despite all the empty promises from both sides, there is simply nothing that any US president could do at this point to effect a recovery. A recovery would have to happen on its own, and every day that goes by, it seems that we have less and less to build on, in terms of civil and industrial infrastructure, a functioning civil society, and an informed citizenry.

The mass media and what we call our educational system seem to be doing everything they can to keep the citizenry from figuring out what their supposed betters are about. Oh, and by the way, everything I have just said about the plight of the US goes double for the EU.

The scope of the problem

See for yourself what already happened to a part of the US that lost its productive capacity:

• detroitfunk.com
• detroitblog
• The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
• The Motor(less) City

With trees growing up through abandoned buildings, large parts of Detroit have already come to resemble scenes from the grim speculative documentary Life After People.

By now, the US economic decline has spread far beyond Detroit and the Rust Belt.

Think about it: When was the last time you saw the label “Made in USA” on any product, good or bad?

And no, it is not possible to sustain a “service economy” without a viable manufacturing infrastructure. Not that there is a service economy to sustain – the real estate bubble has already burst, the remains of our financial sector are being artificially propped up with money that we do not have and cannot earn, and much of our service sector employment has already been outsourced! It should surprise no one that the unemployment picture is considerably worse than the official figures would lead us to believe (see The really, really bad news about the unemployment rate). Newspapers throughout the US report that state and local tax revenues are shrinking due to declining income and property values.

What is left?

I recently heard yet another self-styled pundit of the US employment scene recommending three areas where there still seem to be some jobs for Americans. The only available jobs are in health care, education, and government work – because they cannot be outsourced.

Wow.

Will someone please explain to me who is going to pay for this health care, education, and government work? Does anyone care to predict what will happen after we go into debt to educate the next generation, knowing that there will be no jobs for them after they finish school?

Where do we go from here?

Good question.

And yes, I do have an answer! My point in posting this is that we need to understand exactly what our problems are, and the true extent of our difficulties, before we can even begin to address them.

What’s the next step? We need to stop wasting tax dollars on bailing out Wall Street. Instead, we need to bring our industrial base back to the US. We need to repeal the tax laws and ever-proliferating regulations that have been strangling US businesses or driving them overseas. We need to make it much simpler and more cost-effective for businesses, especially smaller businesses, to provide jobs for US citizens. That’s the only government “stimulus package” that will work.

No, it is not all under our control. But we can keep the faith and do our best to help each other. As Bishop Antoun of the Antiochian Orthodox Church recently told us, “The Lord will provide.”

Click on any of the above thumbnail images to view the original.

When the image gallery page appears, click again on the thumbnail to see the full-size image.

1389ad.deviantart.com

A large collection of art by 1389, including photography, digital art, and some new fractal images, is available at my online gallery.

Look for free desktop wallpaper, and free tools and textures for Photoshop and GIMP! Yes, they are completely free – public domain, no strings attached.

Arson by cell phone?

We don’t have all the evidence in yet, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Just because a few of the local outbreaks of fire appear to have been caused by simple carelessness does not mean that all of them were.

Greek broadcasting station SKAi reported that arson devices triggered by cell phones were found. Where have we heard of that before?

• Wildland Fires in Greece Blamed on Terrorism – Could it Happen in the US?
• Who is setting Greece on fire?
• Greek Fires Blamed on Arson, Olympic Antiquities Saved
• Are Greek Fires a Terrorist Attack?
• Greek government points to arson for fires
• 63 dead in Greek forest fires
• Foreigners help fight Greek fires
• Greek fires blamed on “culture of arson”

Photos from Space

Here are some photos from space, showing how widespread these fires are:

• Scientific Blogging: The Fires In Greece As Seen From Space
• My Way News Photo: Greece Fires
• Der Spiegel: Satellite Photos of the Greek Catastrophe

Updates:

• Wildland Fires in Greece Blamed on Terrorism – Could it Happen in the US?
• Is there a terrorist connection with the California wildfires?

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  Update: Zoo animals enjoying 17-year cicada feast
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