We just finished watching the 2005 movie Because of Winn-Dixie, based on the children’s book by the same name. It had its high points and low points but was a decent flick overall. The girl in the lead role could’ve been a better actor but did a passable job.

One character works in a pet shop and plays guitar. We’re watching him onscreen for the first time and I think, “wow, that guy looks like Dave Matthews.”

Well, duh, it was Dave Matthews, and the truth is he’s a pretty good actor. He actually acted better than most anyone else in the movie. Who knew?

So it seems the state government has successfully lured Apple into building a new $1B datacenter here in North Carolina.

I was thinking about where that datacenter might wind up and the impact those many thousands of servers would have on the local utility grid. Then I thought of the perfect place: Badin, NC. If Apple moved to Badin, it can plug into the Yadkin River hydroelectric plant that ALCOA may be losing. The state wouldn’t have to give Apple a dime in tax breaks if it would’ve let them tap into cheap electricity from the dam. Electricity, you see, is by far the biggest cost to such a massive datacenter.

The problem with this scenario is that the reason the state is opposing ALCOA’s permit renewal is that the thousands of jobs once provided by the aluminum smelting plant are long gone. Turning dam operations over to an admittedly flashy and high-tech Apple would seem to be a savvy move on the face of it but the meager 50 full-time jobs Apple brings makes it a bit hypocritical in the face of the state’s complaint against ALCOA.

On the other hand, in tiny Badin (population 1,154) 50 jobs is 4% of its population and 8% of its workforce. And it is a economically-depressed area, which is an area the state’s incentives were designed to boost. Add in the contractor jobs and the associated vendor businesses that an Apple facility may bring and a modest little high-tech oasis could be created.

This deep-water shipwreck exploration company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, finds a sunken ship filled with millions of gold and silver coins. Spain argues that the ship, the Spanish naval vessel Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes and its contents belongs to them, and a U.S. judge has agreed.

I know international law says Spain owns the vessel. But the gold? Wasn’t that looted from the goldmines of the Incan and Mayan people? Shouldn’t their decendants have a stronger claim?

And what about the British, which sunk the Mercedes in 1804? Since it was their cannons made a reef out of the Mercedes wouldn’t they also have a claim?

It seems to me that all of this is simply a bunch of thieves fighting over loot none of them legally own. Perhaps it belongs beneath the waves after all.