Road repair

On Thursday, nine days ago, road repair crews ripped up several blocks of 84th Avenue, from two to five blocks east of our house. The next day, they ripped up several more blocks, from two blocks east to two blocks west of our house. Then there was a three-day weekend, so nothing was done until Tuesday. On Tuesday, they ripped up a block of Myrtle Avenue, the somewhat-larger residential thoroughfare (with a stripe down the middle, and all!) that meets 84th at a 45-degree angle. On Wednesday, they ripped up several more blocks of Myrtle Avenue. I'm not sure what happened Thursday or Friday, but so far there has been no sign of pouring new asphalt in any of these places.

I've never poured asphalt in my life. My impulse, if I were leading such a project with a single team, would be to rip up a section of road one day, pour a new surface on it the next day, rip up another section the next day, pour a new surface the next, and so on. Probably more efficient, I would have a ripping team and a pouring team, with different equipment and expertise, with the pouring team following one day behind the ripping team.

There are possibly good reasons one might not do it that way. For example, it might be that pouring new asphalt is an order of magnitude faster than ripping up old asphalt, so it doesn't make sense to send out the pouring team for a day until the ripping team has ripped enough road to give the pouring team a full day's work. This seems unlikely, on the general principle that it's easier to destroy something than to create it (entropy and all that), but possible.

Or maybe it's considered helpful to expose the underlayer of road to the elements for a week or two before pouring a new layer of asphalt on top. Again, this seems unlikely -- I would think that would add unpredictability to the process and variability to the materials, producing a worse result -- but possible.

I think the most likely explanation is organizational: for some random reason involving paperwork and/or personalities, the ripping team got moving and the pouring team didn't. The pouring team is passive-aggressively waiting for something before getting to work, while the ripping team passive-aggressively continues doing its job to call attention to the lack of followup by the pouring team.

Anyway, the effect is a lot of bumpy road surface, a lot of intermittently blocked streets, a lot of traffic jams, a few parked cars getting towed, etc.

rape and innocence

The Jim Crow era included a lot of laws, legal procedures, and extralegal procedures (like lynching -- think Emmett Till) predicated on the fear of black men raping white women. Which is ironic, because historically it's been far more common for white men to rape black women. Indeed, almost every black American is descended from one or more acts of white-on-black rape (whether involving actual physical force or simply enormous power imbalances). But "predatory black man raping innocent white woman" was an appealing image that justified racial segregation and oppression in the name of protecting the innocent.

For the past few decades, there hasn't been so much talk about protecting white women from rape by predatory black men; instead it's been about protecting children from sexual abuse by (male) gay adults. Which is ironic, since most gay adults aren't pedophiles, and most pedophiles aren't gay. But pedophilia and homosexuality are both non-majority sexual behaviors, so it's easy to define them both as "sick, perverted", and then to equate the two. "Predatory gay man raping innocent child" was an appealing image that justified homophobia in the name of protecting the innocent.

More recently, the lurking threat has shifted from gay people to trans people. The concern seems to be that straight men will pretend to be trans women in order to sneak into public women's bathrooms, where they'll rape the innocent, defenseless women in those bathrooms. This is ironic, because IIUC, most trans women are "straight", in the sense of being more sexually interested in men than in women; a woman is several orders of magnitude more likely to be raped by a straight man than by a trans lesbian woman.

But that's about "real" trans women; the worry is about straight men pretending to be trans women (with the unspoken assumption that all trans women are really straight men pretending; that nobody could really disagree with one's upbringing on such a fundamental issue as gender.) And why would a straight man pretend to be female? Obviously, in order to commit rape; it's not clear how pretending to be female helps with that, but they're both non-majority sexual behaviors, so one must lead to the other. "Predatory straight male cross-dresser raping innocent properly-dressed woman" is an appealing image that justifies legislating certain people out of existence in the name of protecting the innocent.

Of course, I don't know of a single proven case of a straight man dressing up as a woman to sneak into a public women's bathroom and commit rape. It could happen, but it seems like a lot of unnecessary hassle. If you're willing to commit the felony of rape, a social taboo -- or even a misdemeanor law -- on men entering women's bathrooms isn't likely to stop you. Why go to the trouble of putting on a dress, stockings, makeup, and high heels when you could just walk in? If you guess wrong, there are several women in the bathroom, and they start beating you up, you can run faster without a dress and high heels.

This fascination with rape in "socially conservative" cultures justifies not only oppressing blacks, oppressing homosexuals, and oppressing transsexuals, but even oppressing the innocent women they're supposedly protecting. For example, many conservative Jewish, Moslem, and Christian sects are so concerned about men raping women that they require women to cover most of their bodies to prevent inflaming the men around them into uncontrollable lust. It might seem more obvious to expect men to control their own lust, but I guess that's unrealistic. To stay on the safe side, unrelated women and men can't touch, converse together, worship together, even look at one another for fear the men will turn into raging sex monsters. And women can be beaten, locked up, and killed for failing to take the measures mandated in the name of protecting them from being raped. I guess it's appealing for some men (think Donald Trump) to think of themselves as so oversexed that they can't control their sexual urges and shouldn't be expected to. The titillating fantasy of being "overcome by lust in the moment" applies across genders: we've all heard stories of sorority girls intentionally getting drunk to lower their sexual inhibitions and increase the likelihood of being thus "overcome", but I think only alpha-males use the fantasy of being "out of control" as a means to control other people.