Michelle Quinn, one of the Los Angeles Times staff writers who blogs about technology, used this photo of Pope Benedict to illustrate a post about Apple apologizing to customers of its MobileMe service. You might ask: why? The first commenter on the blog did, posting this:

I take it this is the type of crack layout we can expect now that Zell has laid off everyone - a picture of Pope Benedict accompanying an article on Apple. Nice work, LA Times.

No way to know how many similar comments were submitted, but two hours after the first comment was approved for publication Quinn felt moved to post an explanation:

Ok, a little explanation is called for.

I chose the Pope to illustrate this story about Apple apologizing, because it is a picture of the Pope apologizing.

But then I also liked the way his arms are raised as if asking for forgiveness. Or, as one commenter suggested, he could be asking about the whereabouts of his contacts.

-- Michelle Quinn