Note to self: Panda earthquake image not a fake, exactly

Dear Bill: You know that picture of the terrified giant panda clinging to a policeman's leg after the Japan earthquake? The one that, in the terrible early hours of this awful disaster, rocketed all over the Internet, landed on your screen and induced all sorts of anthropomorphic empathy on your part? It's not a fake, exactly; the image is real, but it's five years old, and was taken at a panda research center, and not in Japan but in China, and the guy isn't a policeman, he's a keeper, and it was feeding time, and the panda wasn't terrified but hungry. As you're contemplating the still-unfolding disaster, reserve a little brainpower to ponder on who puts this sort of misinformation out there at a time like this, and why. And try not to let it make you feel worse about this moment in history than you already do.