This is the best explanation I’ve seen so far of the circumstances surrounding the problems Japan has been experiencing at its nuclear power plants: Why I Am Not Worried About Japan’s Nuclear Reactors.

Not linking to it would be a crime in a world ruled by PageRank. If you see this and you are able to post links on the Web (hint: you are, even if it’s just via Twitter), then do so. Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is better.

Microsoft Bing’s twitter account today posted the following bizarre message:

How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.

So, basically, they’re saying that they can afford to give away $100,000 to help the people of Japan in the face of the appalling tragedy that has struck them – but it’s conditional upon people retweeting Bing’s message.

Presumably, if not enough people retweet, they’ll just put the rest of the money back in the office party fund.

I assume they’re paying some “Social Media Marketing Guru” to come up with stuff like this. The mind boggles.

UPDATE, 22:50: Bing have sort-of-apologised (although it sounds a bit like “We’re sorry some of you were too dumb to grasp what we meant”) and made the donation in full.