News Flash: Kicking Someone's Butt Can Be An Effective Deterrent

SDEROT, Israel (AP) -- Six months after Israel ended its bruising offensive against Gaza Strip militants, the people of this rocket-scarred border town are enjoying their calmest stretch in recent memory.

The rocket attacks that made life unbearable have all but stopped. Playgrounds are filled with children on summer vacation, stores are bustling and the town's public swimming pool is open for the first time in five years.

"People are out more. There is movement. There is a different atmosphere," said Avigail Hazan, a 42-year-old storekeeper. "It was worth going through the war for this. It's fun now; I'm calm."

"Life before the war - it wasn't life," agreed the town's deputy mayor, Rafik Agaronov. "Now, thank God, there is quiet. Hopefully it will stay like this forever. If our children are calm, we are calm."

Israel's anger and frustration over the incessant rocket fire on this working-class town less than a mile from Gaza's border was the loudly proclaimed reason for its invasion of Gaza. The fact that the attacks have all but ended has improved the atmosphere and set the stage for possible talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

The heavy rocket fire brought life in Sderot to a virtual standstill as hundreds fled to get out of range. Those who stayed behind kept close to home and to their fortified shelters.

Israel's massive air and ground assault, which began last December, killed more than 1,100 Palestinians, wounded thousands more and caused massive destruction.

Despite a backlash of international criticism and war crimes allegations, Israel says the assault achieved its primary goal of stopping the rocket fire. Israeli officials believe the offensive proved to be a powerful deterrent, though they also say Gaza's Hamas rulers are using the lull to rearm.

Perhaps the most visible change in town is the reopening of the Olympic-size pool, providing a welcome place to cool off from the sweltering Israeli summer. In recent years, the rocket attacks made the pool too dangerous to enter.

"The kids missed this, they needed this," said Zion Peretz, the pool manager, as campers jumped into the water behind him. "It's given us a joy for life again."

But not everyone has been able to erase old memories that quickly.

Experts have warned of long-lasting psychological damage inflicted on Sderot's 24,000 residents, particularly children, who suffer from exceptionally high rates of anxiety and bed-wetting compared to other Israeli children, according to local psychologists.

Yaeli Biton says she is still under psychological care and takes daily anxiety medication.

"I hear a car screech, a refrigerator door slam, the air conditioner make noise, and I panic," said the 50-year-old Biton. "It's been like this for eight years. The feeling doesn't go away in one day."

Many in Sderot said they believe the current calm won't last, and that Hamas was using the tranquil period to prepare for another round of fighting. That looming possibility is evident in the barricaded shelters scattered throughout town. Even the pool has a safe room for bathers to scamper to in case of emergency.

Still, residents say they can't remember a better time for their hard-hit town. On cooler evenings, it's not unusual to see people drinking a beer with their neighbors outside their homes, or playing backgammon or chess in the park.

Dina Keinan, who owns a bike store, said her sales have increased in recent months.

"People didn't buy bicycles because they were afraid to ride them for long periods," she said. "It's different now."

Atara Orenbouch, a 37-year-old mother of six, said life in Sderot was "almost a normal life." Her children can now walk around freely like all other Israeli children.

fear equals profit

Don't listen to all the ridiculous hype about the swine flu, and don't waste any energy worrying about it. I don't know who starts this kind of silly hysteria, but if I had to take a wild guess, I would say... probably the companies who stand to make a profit from the vaccine.

Anyway, here's a little-known (and almost never published) fact about the swine flu: it is no more virulent (no stronger and no more dangerous) than the usual, annually occurring version of influenza.

If you don't believe me, research it yourself.

Put your hand
back in your pocket

"Put your hand back in your pocket ass-kiss. And tell your Messiah, Mr. Obama, that if he wants to make nicey-nicey with Mahmood, he better hurry up, because we're about to piss him off real bad," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu muttered to Defense Secretary Robert Gates as he leaves Gates hangin' in a recent photo op after the two met to discuss how to deal with Iran's soon-to-be-realized nuclear threat.

"You wanna be a coward, then be one, but don't try to shake my hand like we agreed on anything," Netanyahu told Gates privately.


"We are here to announce that our "friends" in America have decided to be cowards rather than allies when it comes to the heavy lifting", Netanyahu remarked to reporters.

Defense Secretary gates seemed a little embarrassed:
Oh well. Embarrassed is better than incinerated.

EIGHT YEARS AGO

Not surprisingly, nobody ever answered the question I asked on June 4th: Why are we still in Afghanistan? Bush sent troops there eight years ago to capture Osama Bin Laden ... and he failed to accomplish that. Its time to admit he failed and bring our sons and daughters home. Let me repeat that: we went there EIGHT YEARS AGO.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. military authorities in Afghanistan may hire a private contractor to provide around-the-clock security at dozens of bases and protect vehicle convoys moving throughout the country.

The possibility of awarding a security contract comes as the Obama administration is sending thousands of more troops into Afghanistan to quell rising violence fueled by a resurgent Taliban. [And the "Taliban" will continue to be "resurgent" as long as the United States keeps occupying their country and killing their friends and relatives.] As the number of American forces grow over the next several months, so too does the demand to guard their outposts.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants to cut back on the use of contractors that now provide a wide range services to American troops in war zones, including transportation, communications, food service, construction, and maintenance. As recently as February, however, Gates called the use of private security contractors in certain parts of Afghanistan "vital" to supporting U.S. bases. A contract for the work also creates job opportunities for Afghans, he said.

But the use of private contractors in Iraq has been highly contentious. Since a September 2007 shooting of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad by guards employed by Blackwater (now Xe Services), critics have urged U.S. officials to maintain much tighter controls over hired guards.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Army published a notice July 10 informing interested contractors it was contemplating a contract for "theater-wide" armed security.

"The contract would provide for a variety of security services, to include the static security of compounds on which U.S. and coalition forces reside, and for the protection of mission essential convoys in and around forward operating bases located throughout Afghanistan," the notice states.

Not Even His Racism Is Sincere

What Did I Just Say?

What a coincidence. In one of yesterday's posts ("the ring-kissing cowards of the news media"), I stated that after reading yesterday's AP headline stories, it "sounds to me like racial conflict is being highlighted, and thereby encouraged, more so now under an African-American president than it was before he took office."

And now today's headline story:

Obama remark on black scholar's arrest angers cops

BOSTON (AP) -- Many police officers across the country have a message for President Barack Obama: Get all the facts before criticizing one of our own. Obama's public criticism that Cambridge officers "acted stupidly" when they arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. could make it harder for police to work with people of color, some officers said Thursday.

It could even set back the progress in race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first African-American president, they said.

"What we don't need is public safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves," said David Holway, president of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, which represents 15,000 public safety officials around the country. "The president [has] alienated public safety officers across the country with his comments."

Gates was arrested July 16 by Sgt. James Crowley, who was first to respond to the home the renowned black scholar rents from Harvard, after a woman reported seeing two black men trying to force open the front door. Gates said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed. He was charged with disorderly conduct after police said he yelled at the white officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after Crowley demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home. The charge was dropped Tuesday, but Gates has demanded an apology, calling his arrest a case of racial profiling.

Obama was asked about Gates' arrest at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care Wednesday night and began his response by saying Gates was a friend and he didn't have all the facts.

"But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry," Obama said. "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 - what I think we know separate and apart from this incident - is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact."

On Thursday, the White House tried to calm the hubbub over Obama's comments by saying Obama was not calling the officer stupid. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama felt that "at a certain point the situation got far out of hand" at Gates' home.

Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas said Obama's comments hurt the agency.

Fellow law enforcement officers across the country sided with Crowley.

Obama's comments could diminish work done by law enforcement to address racial issues, said James Preston, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Florida State Lodge.

You may not remember this one, or perhaps you didn't read it, but on January 31st of this year I wrote the following:

Pat yourselves on the back. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can now feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. Good for you. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but an articulate black man who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. You have also foolishly traded your economic freedom -- and mine – what little there was left – for the chance to feel good about yourselves. Forgive me if I don’t share your happy obliviousness.

By the way … it is just as unacceptable for blacks to “play the race card”, as it is repulsive, immoral and politically suicidal for any other ethnic group to play that card (an incredible 94% of the 12 million black voters in America voted for the black candidate in 2008).

Now … when you have finished judging and disdaining me for expressing such prehistoric and racist views, realize this: The ideas expressed above are not even my own. I borrowed them from an open letter written on November 6, 2008 by Anne Wortham, an individualist liberal who happens to be black. Dr. Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in higher education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals whose ideas and opinions are featured in Bill Moyer’s book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness.

Are you brave enough to allow yourself to be viewed as politically incorrect for the sake of rescuing a little intellectual honesty from the hysteria of recent political events? Anne Wortham is, and I, for one, admire her for it.

I don't know about you, but I am getting tired of hearing racists accuse other people of being a racist. A negro can be just as much a "racist" as any caucasian can be, and Obama is a example of it. That's right. I think there is more than enough evidence to conclude that our president is a racist. The really sinister part, though, is that not even his racism is sincere. He doesn't care if someone is black or white or Hispanic or Asian. He only cares how he can exploit that person's blackness or whiteness to his own political advantage.

Was Jesus A Communist?

I bet that title got your attention, didn't it? But seriously, as a Christian, I am not so sure that leveling the playing field economically is a bad thing, as so many on the political right would have us believe.
Jesus may not have been a Communist, but I am fairly certain he was not a "capitalist" either.

What I write in this blog post may shock some people, but please think long and hard about it before you dismiss my views out of hand.
The body of teachings about money in the scriptures do sound more to me like communist theory than capitalism to me. Read them again. Sell all you have; give to the poor; share all things in common. Of course, they are not communist teachings, but they are certainly not supportive of capitalist theory either, nor of an American economic system that fosters greed and is ruled by the Prince of the Air. Humor me and read the following four excerpts from the scriptures:

ACTS 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

MATTHEW 19:16-24
Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"
"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."
"Which ones?" the man inquired.
Jesus replied, " `Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and `love your neighbor as yourself.' "
"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

1JOHN 3:16-20
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

LUKE 12:32-34
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

These are just a few of the many scriptures that teach this way, but of course rich people like American Christians (and we are all "rich" people compared to most of the world's population) don't want to give up our material riches, so we rationalize and cleverly explain away these teachings. We construct entire theological doctrines to avoid the plain and simple truth. And the truth is that we are all in the same position as that of the young man "with great wealth" in the teaching recorded in the 19th chapter of Matthew.

Maybe the government shouldn't force us to share our wealth. Its an arguable point. But is forcing us to share worse than maintaining a system that fosters greed?

the ring-kissing cowards of the news media

What do you notice about what the Associated Press calls the "Top U.S. News" Stories of the day?

Report: NY, NJ immigration raids violated rights
NEW YORK (AP) -- Immigration agents raiding homes for suspected illegal immigrants violated the U.S. Constitution by entering without proper consent and may have used racial profiling, a report analyzing arrest records found....

Analysis: Gates arrest a signpost on racial road
It took less than a day for the arrest of Henry Louis Gates to become racial lore. When one of America's most prominent black intellectuals winds up in handcuffs, it's not just another episode of profiling - it's a signpost on the nation's bumpy road to equality....

Charge dropped against black Harvard scholar
BOSTON (AP) -- Prosecutors dropped a disorderly conduct charge Tuesday against prominent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested after forcing his way into his own house in what he and other blacks say was an outrageous but all-too-common example of how police treat them....

Investigator rules against Palin in ethics probe
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by trading on her position as she sought money for lawyer fees, in the latest legal distraction for the former vice presidential candidate as she prepares to leave office this week....

Black, white protesters rally over dragging death
PARIS, Texas (AP) -- State police in riot gear rushed a downtown street to break up a standoff Tuesday between hundreds of black and white extremists who exchanged screams of "Black power!" and "White power!" during a protest over the state's handling of the case of a black man who was run over and dragged by a vehicle....

Sounds to me like racial conflict is being highlighted, and thereby encouraged, more so now under an African-American president than it was before he took office.

Let me put it in less diplomatic terms: The pandering little caucasians of the news media are afraid of the big black man who has taken over the government, so they are trying to kiss up to him and "his people". But guess what dummies? Black Americans are not "his people". Rich, power-hungry, corrupt politicians are "his people", whether they happen to be Negro or Caucasian doesn't really matter to him, so long as he can use and exploit them to further his own personal agenda and lust for ever-increasing power.

Have You Heard That Black Is White,
Wrong Is Right and That God's First Name Is Baa-aa-rock?

I want to write in my blogs, but I have temporarily run out of interesting things about which to write. The news being written these days bores me. Apparently, the editors of the Associated Press have, like all the other major media outlets, stopped thinking for themselves. Every other story is either about Baa-aa-rock Obama Bin Laden or about some homosexual agenda item.

It should be obvious by now (to any thinking person with an ounce of wisdom or understanding) that this guy is the worst president this country has ever elected. This man's lust for power is his god. The spirits that drives this man are not the Spirit of the one, true living God. They are other spirits --of greed and lust -- a lust for power.

And when the news media outlets are not promoting Obama's agenda for him, they are busy pandering to homosexuals by writing a ridiculously disproportionate number of "articles" and "stories" about homosexual issues, always trying to cast them in a favorable light, as the homosexuals themselves try desperately to justify themselves and their perversion.

It is stunning to me just how many people have begun to believe that black is white, up is down and wrong is right. Apparently, if one lacks moral training based on the Bible, and one hears other people assert enough times that a particular lie is actually the truth, then one will eventually begin to believe those people (and that lie).

It is sad. Truly sad.

Have you ever wondered...

What is the purpose of that little button on the top of baseball caps?
I removed mine and ... surprise ... the hat did not fall apart, nor did the civilized world come to an end. The hat just looks better without it.
So why do they all (almost all) have that dumb button on top?

Some Things (and some people) Never Change

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police say former Washington Mayor Marion Barry has been arrested and charged with stalking a woman. The United States Park Police said Barry, a current D.C. Council member, was arrested Saturday in Washington after a woman flagged down an officer and complained Barry was stalking her. Barry was charged with misdemeanor stalking and released.

Barry's spokeswoman, Natalie Williams, said Sunday that the accusation was "baseless." She says Barry plans to fight the charge and said the accuser is a 40-year-old woman Barry had helped financially. [She is probably a prostitute with whom Barry became obsessed -- "had helped financially" in the past!]

Barry served four terms as mayor. In his third (in 1990), he was videotaped in an FBI sting in a hotel smoking crack cocaine with prostitutes. He served six months in prison and [here's the kicker]...

...wait for it ...

wait for it ...


... in 1994 he was re-elected to the mayor's office.

Oh ...
my ...
God!
What does that say about the average D.C. resident?
You draw your own conclusions, folks.

I remember being completely dismayed and disgusted when I first heard that news in 1994, and now, fifteen years later, I am just as repulsed and nauseated again upon being reminded of it.

What Causes Traffic Jams!?

I, like you, have wondered for many years why we all just suddenly stop in the middle of an interstate highway without any triggering event like an accident up ahead. So I did a fairly thorough search and came up with an explanation that seems to identify all the main factors, all the main reasons for the formation of traffic jams. However, I sandwiched the one I like between two that are more typically found when searching this subject. I recommend reading as much or as little of the first and third article or excerpt as you like, but read the Freakonomics article, followed by Aaron S.'s comment. It is that comment that so succinctly identifies all the primary culprits and causes of traffic jams. He even offers solutions after identifying the causes.

You could try to read something like this mathematical explanation of traffic flow and of the dynamical phenomenon of the jam:

Taken from the ... New Journal of Physics

Vol. 10 (2008) 033001:

Mathematical models of traffic flow are constructed focusing on this simple property of the motion of vehicles. In short, traffic flow is a non-equilibrium physical system consisting of moving particles with asymmetric interaction of exclusive effect. The models have basically two kinds of solutions: a free flow solution and jam flow solutions. In a free flow solution, all vehicles move at nearly the same large velocity with a safe distance between two successive vehicles. In contrast, a jam flow solution shows traveling clusters in a flow. Vehicles almost stop in a cluster, which is identified with a traffic jam. Such models have succeeded in forming a jam on a circuit in the absence of a bottleneck, when a free flow is initially set and the average vehicle density is a little bit larger than a certain critical value, which corresponds to the critical density of fundamental diagrams.

The physical mechanism of forming a jam is summarized as follows. Small fluctuations always exist in the movement of vehicles in a traffic flow. If the vehicle density is low, such a fluctuation disappears and the free flow is maintained. On the other hand, if the density exceeds the critical value, the fluctuation cannot disappear but instead grows steadily and eventually breaks the free flow. After relaxation, a jam is created and travels along the circuit without decaying. Mathematically, the free flow solution is unstable and the jam flow solutions become stable. The stability change at the critical density caused by the enhancement of fluctuations in a free flow is understood as a phase transition of non-equilibrium systems. The phenomenon originates from the dynamical effect of the collective motion in a many-body system. It does not require the existence of a bottleneck.

Traffic flow can be investigated as a dynamical phenomenon of a many-particle system. In general, such a system drastically changes its macroscopic aspect owing to the effect of the collective motion of interacting particles. Such phenomena are observed in several fields in physics. The characteristic features of collective phenomena are phase transition, bifurcation of a dynamical system, pattern formation, etc. It is not unexpected that the same physical mechanism appears in socio-dynamical objects. Traffic jams are just the subject for investigation along this line. We have succeeded in simulating a traffic jam by mathematical models without a bottleneck, whenever the average vehicle density on the road exceeds a certain critical value. The crucial point is the effect of collective motion caused by the interaction among vehicles, which is originated by drivers seeing other vehicles. The effect makes the free flow unstable and generates a traffic jam similar to phase transitions and pattern formation in non-equilibrium many-particle systems.

Can our mathematical prediction be tested? In this paper, we report the first experimental verification that a jam can be generated in the absence of a bottleneck. Our experimental result is consistent with our simulations, and provides clear evidence that the emergence of a jam is a collective phenomenon.

In real data, the relationship between vehicle density and flow rate (fundamental diagram) has a universal property in highway traffic. The data points of traffic flow are sharply divided into two parts at the critical value of the vehicle density, labelled as free flow and congested traffic flow. In the congested flow part, it is easily supposed that a traffic jam appears just beyond the critical density. Fundamental diagrams show similar shapes at any point on any highway, and the critical density is almost the same value. Such common properties indicate that the phenomenon of traffic jams can be studied from the physical point of view as a dynamical phase transition.

Or you could read this one (much more clear and easy to understand):

Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything

What Causes Traffic Jams? ...You!

The next time a traffic jam materializes in front of you for no apparent reason, think about Japan. That’s where scientists have, for the first time, recreated “shockwave” traffic jams, in which one driver’s slowing down creates a ripple effect that moves backwards through traffic, grinding everything to a halt for miles. They say recreating the phenomenon successfully is the key to finding ways to defeat it.

Their experiment found that human error is a major cause of these most frustrating kinds of traffic jams (there are, of course, other causes). But if driver error is the source of the problem, don’t drivers also have the solution? Clive Thompson points to one idea, the classic “slow down and keep a constant speed” method, which seems to be effective in breaking these shockwaves. Any other solutions?

Comment by Aaron S. on March 10, 2008:

I used to be quite amused when scientists would run traffic tests and just could not figure out why there were traffic jams! Everyone who drove could!

I even figured out how to figure it all out. Create a computer program with a highways, roads, exits, on-ramps, redlights, and the such like.

Then, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO, is make a bunch of “cars” with different parameters. ABC Cars take off like a rabbit at a green light…DEF cars take off a bit slower…and XYZ cars take off like molasses.

Then, on the interstate, you have people who exceed the speed limit, go the speed limit, and then those people who ought to be sent to prison.

Further, you permit some of the slow pokes to get in the left lane every now and then.

Also, people have different braking prowess…this means there will be wreaks at times…which causes rubbernecking until its cleaned up.

Then there’s my personal pet peeve: People who don’t know how to merge. The traffic is doing 70…and they get on doing 45…slowing everyone down.

How to fix it?

Imprison anyone who does not know how to merge correctly (or even death penalty if they’re over 40, which means they’ve been doing it for years!).

I would also add that if an accident could be gotten COMPLETELY out of view (including all the flashing lights, etc.), traffic wouldn’t slow down! So, if you have a fender bender, don’t stop in the lane…get off to the side…miles to the side, if possible.

Lastly, police ticket drivers in the left lane going under the speed limit (assuming normal conditions). This alone would reduce the national blood pressure by at least 20%.

In this instance, I am all for profiling, whether it be racial, gender, age, or whatever. If we find that a particular group of people are the worst offenders, they must be send to the penitentiary and given “Driver Sensitivity Training” until they actually know how to drive.

You might also be able to interpret relevant excerpts from the...
"Emergent Phenomenon in Congested Traffic Flow"
(Daniel Vandervelde's final physics term paper submitted on 5-6-04) --Good Luck. :o)

Their process involves setting up the lattice or highway and then, “A domain of
size k is then associated with a site of the CM occupied by k particles. One then proceeds
by examining the evolution of the domains, and identifying their dynamical processes. As will be demonstrated, in many cases these processes are closely related to the diffusion and the chipping processes of the asymmetric CM.” The density of the automobiles tells the story of the movement of the vehicles. First they consider what they call the “cruise control limit”. This is where the probability of braking occurring is zero, in other words all cars are maintaining a constant velocity. There, as long as the density stays below some density max, free flowing traffic persists. Here all cars are moving deterministically, and one can express the current as J(  )= max v  . As density increases, local jams form and current reduces. This leads to the conclusion that a phase transition, if one exists, must occur at some 0
less than or equal to f  .

This study also had some revealing results regarding the flow of vehicles out from
a jam. It was found that the outflow of traffic from a jam will self organize, creating a
critical state of maximum throughput. This state was achieved when the emergent traffic
jams were just able to survive indefinitely. “This implies that the intrinsic flow rate for
vehicles leaving a jam equals maximum throughput.” Results of this study show that
maximum throughput is actually achieved when the left boundary condition is that of an
infinitely large jam, and the right boundary condition is left open. This is explained by,
“An intuitive explanation is that maximum throughput cannot be any higher than the
intrinsic flow rate out of a jam. Otherwise the flow rate into a jam would be higher than
the flow rate out, and the jam would be stable in the long time limit, thus reducing the
overall current. By definition, of course, the maximum throughput cannot be lower than
this intrinsic flow rate.” It is true that the maximum throughput selection is something which is intrinsic in driven diffusive systems. This model differs though in that the left boundary condition is that of the front of the infinite jam drifting backward in time. “If the left boundary is fixed in space and vehicles are inserted at velocities less than max v , then the outflow from a jam cannot reach maximum throughput”. This is
particular notable since real world situations where one has a disturbance which cannot
move, like onramps or reductions in lanes, lead to lower throughput downstream than the theory would predict.

Has anyone found a simpler explanation for traffic jams on open highways having no bottleneck and no traffic accident? If so, please share it with me. Please!