THE MAILBAG: Reader Larry Gilbert has additional info about our all-time favorite soft drink ingredient, glycerol ester of wood rosin: “When I last read up on it, I learned it’s added to citrus-juice-based sodas as an emulsifier, to keep the citrus oils from separating. Most soda makers think it’s undesirable to have a carbonated drink that has to be shaken up. (Orangina is a notable exception. Track it down at QFC sometime, and note the `gently shake’ direction on the can.)”
BETTING AGAINST THE HOUSE: This guy in the north end has this home he’s willing to sell for a mere $1,000 or so. All you have to do to qualify, according to the large print on the forms you get when you follow signs to the place on weekends, is write a winning essay about the American court system. But then you read the fine print on the form and it turns out there’s also a $99 “credit check” fee required from all entrants, refundable only if fewer than 2,700 entries are received (in which case the essay-contest shtick will be dropped and the house will be offered to regular brokers). While it may be within the letter of the law distinguishing legal contests from illegal private lotteries (one area where the state doesn’t want private competition), you can still experience the warm thrill of helping someone else achieve his or her dream home, for far less than one month’s payment on the place you’re living in now.
LO-DEFINITION TV: TCI Cable, still in its long-delayed replacement of low-capacity cable lines in Seattle (promised “next year” for the past few years and required by its city contract to be done by 1/99), will at least get new digital transmission equipment and new home cable boxes soon. No word yet when we’ll get it; national TCI HQ sez “most” of its local systems will switch within the year. Finally, after being stuck all these years with a mere 40 channels, you might get something close to the 500 channels promised long ago by TCI bossman John Malone.
There’s a catch, of course. As anybody who’s worked with computer graphics knows, digital images can be compressed and transmitted at a vast range of levels, from the super-hi-res rates sometimes called “high definition TV” to the super-lo-res rates of Internet movie clips. According to an NY Times story, TCI plans to squeeze 12 digital channels onto the bandwidth it now uses for one old-style analog TV channel. Each of these new channels will have half the image detail of a current analog broadcast or cable channel. (If you’re squinting to follow a baseball game on a big-screen TV now, just wait!) TCI insists most viewers won’t notice the difference. But if they’re smart, they’ll equip these new cable boxes for variable compression-rate reception. That way, they can get away with videocassette-quality images for, say, BioDome reruns on Showtime, but still provide the ultra-sharpness for High Noon on AMC.
ONE-POINT-FIVE CHEERS: It took a bit, but I decided I support the Paul Allen football stadium scheme. It’s not just to infuriate all my conformist-nonconformist pals on Capitol Hill, who seem to hate pro football even more than they hate TV or the popular religions. (Maybe they’re still in rebellion against the jocks who were mean to ’em in high school.) Here are my reasons: 1) If Allen’s gonna spend his middle age commissioning monuments to himself and his relatives (a UW gallery and library, the Experience Music Project, the twice-aborted Seattle Commons, a big Renton office park, that private home in the San Juans where a summer camp used to be), one of these monuments might as well be one where soccer games and the Boat Show can happen. 2) The financing scheme’s less onerous than it could’ve been, and less than the baseball stadium’s tax plan is. The existing hotel-motel tax will run a few more years, and stadium contractors won’t have to pay sales tax on their concrete. 3) I happen to like watching football, if the price is right and if it’s at least a team of lovable losers like the Hawks. So there.
