Redstone elements that are in a chunk that is very far away behave strangely when toggled on or off while the chunk containing those elements is not loaded.

See this video for more details: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_MM97ifASw

Just for clarification: I do know that no game elements will be updated in unloaded chunks. I do know that - by default - only the chunks in a radius of 10 chunks around a player are usually loaded. However, the video will show that something about my last two statements cannot be right.