Now and then – not every day – I come up with a Grand Unified Theory that explains one or more of life’s great puzzles. And being the generous soul that I am, I share my insight with you.

Because I’m all about the giving.

Here’s what I figured out this summer.

I have observed, from my own experience and from comments on Facebook from sea to shining sea, that pretty much everywhere that people live in the US, all the streets are being dug up this summer. I mean all the streets, as in, if you try to find an alternate route because your usual route is under construction, you’ll certainly find that route under construction too. And if you find a tertiary route, behold, there the bobcats and scarifiers will be also.

Obviously this is a massive conspiracy. But what is it in service of?

This is my insight:

Under pressure from animal rights activists, behavioral scientists have been severely restricted in their use of laboratory rats in mazes. Funding for animal experimentation is drying up.

So the behavioral scientists have turned to the government for an alternative experiment. Streets are being dug up all over each metropolitan area, not for maintenance purposes, but to construct increasingly complex mazes. The progress of our automobiles through these mazes is being systematically tracked by drones in the air.

I think this is the only sufficient explanation for the disruption in our daily commutes.

Remember, if the government denies this obvious truth, that in itself is proof that I’ve guessed right.