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| by Andy
Evangelista first appeared 26 August 1998 Sticky Issue -- The Value of Duct Tape
Many certainly acknowledge the latter, and, fortunately, good old duct tape is stuck on many places other than ducts. In a just a short stroll down the hall at Laurel Heights, the Eye saw the sticky and sturdy stuff patching busted carpet, sealing off an out-of-order drinking fountain, hanging a sign, and holding together a construction worker's tool belt. Duct tape hasn't yet found its way into the operating room or the dental office -- at least for clinical use -- but an electronic stroll through a few duct tape websites finds it's been handy for the following: patching seat covers (it could be upholstery if the furniture is gray), fixing broken tail lights, rolling into a ball for hockey practice, wrapping around newspaper to make a dog chew toy, closing chip bags, holding batteries in the remote control, retreading tennis shoes, labeling floppy disks, shutting luggage, three-legged races when you don't have rope, substitute nail polish remover, removing blackheads, flypaper, and patching the broken last cigarette in the pack. Get Wet, Then Funky UCSF gardener James Aaron has a few hidden talents. He was a winner in Empact's recent chili cookoff, and he'll help make Empact's next big event -- the Sept. 26 UCSF/UCSF Stanford Getaway Day at Waterworld -- a real family affair. Aaron's band, "Kinfolk and Friends," will rock the park between noon and 3 p.m. that day with the kind of R&B and Funk to make even bare feet tap. Aaron plays the bass, and the rest of the band includes his son, two daughters, a nephew, and sister Gwen, who's been a backup singer for the likes of Tom Jones. This won't his first splash in the music world. The 51-year-old Aaron, who got his musical start as a member of the youth choir at St. Beulah Church in the city's Western Addition, has deep roots in the Bay Area R&B scene. He performed in the 60s with "Sly and the Family Stone," playing rhythm guitar and belting out background vocals in such hits as "Everyday People" and "I Want to Thank You." Later, he played with Bobby Womack and Billy Preston. Aaron, a 31-year UCSF employee, had been out of the music scene for several years, before longtime friend and record producer Carl Wheeler talked him into starting the band a year ago, and he didn't have to go farther than his own home to find members. Wheeler, who's produced five gold records, is the keyboard player. Aaron gets a kick out of playing. "At work, I feel real good when I see people admiring a garden or landscape that I've worked on," he said. "And when I'm playing, I get a thrill when I see people bopping their heads and enjoying the music." Tickets for the Waterworld event are $15 per person (kids under 3 are free), which gets you an "all-you-can-eat" picnic lunch, as many trips down the waterslides as your body can handle between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., and the musical entertainment. The water park, located in Concord, is open that Saturday exclusively to UCSF and UCSF Stanford people. Tickets available in advance only -- call 476-2675 for more info. More Than a Cold Shoulder The animal-rights activist arrested on Parnassus on Saturday (Aug. 22), after somehow making his way onto a scaffold outside of the tenth floor of the Medical Sciences building, is the same person who in April climbed the 307-foot Campanile at UC Berkeley to protest animal research there. Back then, however, 20-year-old Michael Kennedy stayed in the lofty, cozy perch atop the campus' landmark tower for one whole week until he ran out of water, came down and was promptly arrested for trespassing. On Saturday at UCSF, he made his point in only three hours while fellow protestors marched and chanted at ground level. UCSF police, who arrested Kennedy for trespassing on Saturday after he came down, said the protestor was shivering and his hands felt frozen. "He said something like boy, it's cold up there,'" said one of the officers, who doesn't think Kennedy had planned on staying up there for too long. He didn't bring up food or water -- or enough clothing. Kennedy's protest sign did stay up until Monday morning, when construction workers who have been relocating fume hood ducts from the inside to the outside of the building removed it from the riser that takes then up and down the structure. The crew, which has been on the project for the last couple of months, by the way, has learned how to dress on Parnassus, where the stiff summer winds make the flag atop the Clinical Sciences building look like it's been permanently starched. From the Research Reports File Reason they get married a year after Mom kicks em out? For men, getting married or moving in with a woman cuts the time spent on routine household chores by three hours a week, on average, according to a University of Michigan study presented Sunday (Aug. 23) at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco. For women, however, moving in with a man or marrying increases housework time by four hours a week, the study found. Programming Reminder Dermatology in the cinema goes cable. Catch UCSF dermatologist Vail Reese as a guest of Joe Bob Briggs, Drive-In movie critic, on cable network TNT's MonsterVision, Saturday (Aug. 29) at 10:30 p.m. (See previous column.) It all happens during a showing of the cinematic masterpiece "Motel Hell." Readers: If you have any items or suggestions for this column, send us an email: andye@itsa.ucsf.edu. |
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It was a shocking finding to some, but a study reported last week by UC
researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory probably won't change the habits of
handy and unhandy people alike. The scientists -- who for three months tested a variety of
sealing materials under conditions similar to those encountered in real heating,
ventilating, and air-conditioning systems -- revealed that duct tape is lousy for sealing
ducts. "We tried as many different kinds of duct sealants as we could get out hands
on. Of all the things we tested, only duct tape failed. It failed reliably and often quite
catastrophically," said Max Sherman, who heads the Energy Performance of Building
Group in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (ETTD). "On the
other hand, while duct tape may not last long as a sealant, in the short run it is strong,
sticky, and fairly easy to use."