People from NASA engineers to photographers to campers know the power of Duct Tape. It's a miracle product. It helped save the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts. People have used it for all kinds of crazy things... even clothing and wart removal (Really! A medical study found it was more effective than conventional treatments!). There are whole web sites devoted to enumerating the uses for the stuff.

Yet, there is one thing that Duct Tape has never been good for: taping ducts. It turns out that almost anything is better for sealing ducts than duct tape. Building codes in most of the U.S. actually ban its use. Metal foil tape or fiber-reinforced mastic work far better.

Now, however, we learn of another problem for which duct tape is a poor solution. From CNN:

Duct tape no substitute for a babysitter, police say

JACKSONVILLE, Florida (AP) -- A woman accused of duct-taping her two children together and leaving them home alone has been charged with child abuse, the sheriff's office said.

Agla Nadia Vincent, 25, was arrested Monday following a seven-month investigation into whether she left her two boys, then aged 2 and 3, taped to each other while she went to work, said Lt. Annie Smith of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

...

But don't fret, Floridians! There is still at least one way to duct tape a person and keep them out of trouble that is not frowned upon by our law enforcement agencies.

In 2000, a photographer named Gemini Wink (His real name. I couldn't make that up.) traveled here to take some pictures of alligators. He used duct tape to mark his trail, but eventually got lost anyway. At dusk. In a gator-infested swamp. Thinking quickly, he climbed a 40 foot tree and, afraid he might fall asleep and then out of the tree in the middle of the night, duct taped himself to it.

As Carl Zwanzig said, "Duct Tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together (*)".

(* except ducts and children, where prohibited by law)