Wind power is a lovely idea, but the major flaw is scaling – you’ve got to set up a bunch of huge towers to do anything useful, right? Well, not necessarily.

How do you explain that the universe began in a state of relatively low entropy? Here’s one explanation: our universe began as a fragment of an exploding universe (and will in turn spawn other universe shards.)

Be you a writer, artist or musician, or simply someone who enjoys the fruits of these fields of endeavour, you should spare the fifteen or so minutes it will take you to read Jonathan Letham’s astonishing essay on plagiarism, intellectual property and the creative process at Harper’s. Even if you’ve never really managed to develop an opinion on such matters, I defy you not to have one by the time you are finished.

Hip profanity. Science Fiction. Now they mix. [boingboing]

The Washington Post has published a mostly sympathetic article about people who believe the government is controlling their minds. The actual likelihood that these people are accurately describing the cause of their symptoms is of course vanishingly small. The interesting angle in this story, however, is that the Internet enables them to find a community of fellow victims to reinforce and support their delusions, and empowers them to do research that at lends a patina of plausibility to their paranoia. [mefi]