THE CLOTHES DRYER

Clothes dryers can be hazardous not only to your brother's health but to the environment as well. Clothes dryers burn over six percent of the total electricity consumed in the U.S. That's a lot of electricity.

Fortunately, there is an alternative...

A clothes line. Even if you hang your clothes outside to dry half the time, you'd save money and do your bit for planet Earth.

Although line drying is the best option, it may not always be possible. I live in Seattle, Washington, where 150 out of 365 days it rains.

And in some communities hanging clothes outside to dry is illegal, although environmental activists such as Project Laundry List are lobbying for legal changes.

Statistics show that only 50% of the population in the U.S. has access outdoors to dry clothes.

Inside drying racks and green gadgets may be the answer.

Bean Sprouts' Melanie Rimmer did a consumer test and found that although scented dryer laundry balls don't necessarily live up to the hype when it comes to replacing dryer sheets, they did cut drying time 50% for a normal load of wash.

Ah, but there is a catch. We live in a perfectly imperfect world. There are pros and cons to these spiky energy savers.

One big environmental con is that PVC is used to make the dryer balls. PVC is not only an environmental hazard when it comes to manufacturing it also creates hazardous waste when it comes time to dispose of those dryer balls.

On the flip side, we must burn approximately 800 lbs. of coal a year to power one electric dryer. 8000 lbs. over the ten-year life of a dryer. And according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy an electric dryer can use between 1800-5000 watts of power. Dryer balls could cut those numbers in half.

It is another one of those "plastic or paper" dilemmas.

A BOX OF CRAYONS

Color. Have you ever met the kind of person who insists,"See that mountain in the distance? Isn't it a beautiful shade of dark violet tinged slightly with deep navy, a hint of teal, and a few splashes of cornflower blue like the Crayola crayon color?"

And you say, "You mean that purple mountain over there?"

Do you know someone who seems to see colors you don't?

If this person is female, she may be one of the 2% to 3% of the world's women are tetrachromats, who perhaps see 100 million colors, thanks to their genes , according to Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"It may be impossible for us trichromats to imagine what a 4, -color world would look like. But mathematics alone suggest the difference would be astounding, said Jay Neitz, a renowned color vision researcher at th Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dr. Gabriele Jordan of Newcastle University in Great Britain conducts genetic tetrachromat research. To identify a true tetrachromat, "Dr . Jordan started working backwards from certain "color blind" boys to their mothers."

"About 8% of the world's men have color deficiency, which is the term vision researchers prefer to color blindness."

"Most of them inherit two red or two green cones along with the standard blue cone, making it impossible for them to distinguish between red and green peppers, or tell how well-done a steak is, or pick out matching clothes."

Thanks to Vischeck, computer simulation software, you can gain a glimpse of how color deficient males might see this blog page or any other website, or image file.

Vischeck also has a program, Tiny Eyes, that lets you see the world the way babies do the first six months of life.

The world can be seen many different ways.