Wednesday
9/23
Ebb and Flow. Or Not.
Damn this traffic jam
Well I left my job about 5 o'clock
It’s not often that I ruminate over my seemingly endless list of psychological peculiarities… um, I mean ‘charming eccentricities’... but it was just yesterday that I was reminded of one of my favorites. To wit: I’m often unable to allow myself to be drawn into the moment of a situation and simply experience it the way I’m meant to. I can’t for example, just sit back and enjoy a movie shot in England because my mind inevitably begins to wander and I’ll start thinking about how peculiar it is that Japan is the only major nation on earth with no historical ties to England that also drives on the left. Coincidence, or is there a reason?
Likewise, despite the fact that I’ve been on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride three or four times I couldn’t really tell you much about it because I spend most of the time wondering about things like how deep the water is and if Walt’s head really is frozen in a top-secret underground bunker. In short, I’m the guy who ends up missing the point of a magic trick because I’m so wrapped up in trying to figure out how it’s done.
Anyway, the practical upshot of all this is that in the midst of watching the horrendous Rita-driven evacuee traffic on CNN yesterday my mind inevitably wandered from the human toll of the situation to more arcane matters. Has anyone, I wondered, ever scientifically quantified just how traffic jams work? It’s always seemed to me that fluid dynamics might be a way of framing an explanation, but then wouldn’t individual cars suggest more of a particulate or granular model? And wouldn’t chaos theory have a hand in the whole thing? There seemed but one solution: consult that shiny, new-fangled wonder of technology that is the Interweb!
My impatience was quickly rewarded; after about 30 seconds of Googling around I found more geeky goodness on the mechanics of traffic jams than you could shake a simile at. There are simple representations of traffic waves, and there are very cool interactive Java applets that let you control the destiny of tiny, (and presumably aggravated) traffic bound drivers. There are descriptions of traffic in terms of granular physics, (hey, I was right!) and there are mathematical models of traffic that are, to me at least, entirely inscrutable. There are articles about theoretical physicists who ponder social order and crystalline structure; and then there is this book about massively parallel microworlds and complex adaptive systems. Hoo-rah!
So there it is; that’s how that particular psychological eccentricity of mine played out today: my apparent emotional ADD concerning Gulf Coast evacuees enabled my fondness for figuring out geeky stuff. Go figure.
(Oh yeah, and it turns out that the Japanese drive on the left because of the way Samurai warriors carried their swords. Really.)
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Ebb and Flow. Or Not.
Damn this traffic jam
How I hate to be late
It hurts my motor to go so slow
Damn this traffic jam
Time I get home my supper'll be cold
Damn this traffic jam
Well I left my job about 5 o'clock
It took fifteen minutes go three blocks
Just in time to stand in line
With a freeway looking like a parking lot
- James Taylor
- James Taylor
It’s not often that I ruminate over my seemingly endless list of psychological peculiarities… um, I mean ‘charming eccentricities’... but it was just yesterday that I was reminded of one of my favorites. To wit: I’m often unable to allow myself to be drawn into the moment of a situation and simply experience it the way I’m meant to. I can’t for example, just sit back and enjoy a movie shot in England because my mind inevitably begins to wander and I’ll start thinking about how peculiar it is that Japan is the only major nation on earth with no historical ties to England that also drives on the left. Coincidence, or is there a reason?
Likewise, despite the fact that I’ve been on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride three or four times I couldn’t really tell you much about it because I spend most of the time wondering about things like how deep the water is and if Walt’s head really is frozen in a top-secret underground bunker. In short, I’m the guy who ends up missing the point of a magic trick because I’m so wrapped up in trying to figure out how it’s done.
Anyway, the practical upshot of all this is that in the midst of watching the horrendous Rita-driven evacuee traffic on CNN yesterday my mind inevitably wandered from the human toll of the situation to more arcane matters. Has anyone, I wondered, ever scientifically quantified just how traffic jams work? It’s always seemed to me that fluid dynamics might be a way of framing an explanation, but then wouldn’t individual cars suggest more of a particulate or granular model? And wouldn’t chaos theory have a hand in the whole thing? There seemed but one solution: consult that shiny, new-fangled wonder of technology that is the Interweb!
My impatience was quickly rewarded; after about 30 seconds of Googling around I found more geeky goodness on the mechanics of traffic jams than you could shake a simile at. There are simple representations of traffic waves, and there are very cool interactive Java applets that let you control the destiny of tiny, (and presumably aggravated) traffic bound drivers. There are descriptions of traffic in terms of granular physics, (hey, I was right!) and there are mathematical models of traffic that are, to me at least, entirely inscrutable. There are articles about theoretical physicists who ponder social order and crystalline structure; and then there is this book about massively parallel microworlds and complex adaptive systems. Hoo-rah!
So there it is; that’s how that particular psychological eccentricity of mine played out today: my apparent emotional ADD concerning Gulf Coast evacuees enabled my fondness for figuring out geeky stuff. Go figure.
(Oh yeah, and it turns out that the Japanese drive on the left because of the way Samurai warriors carried their swords. Really.)
