  The abelian sandpile model in two dimensions does not show the type of
critical behavior familar from equilibrium systems. Rather, the properties of
the stationary state follow from the condition that an avalanche started at a
distance r from the system boundary has a probability proportional to 1/sqrt(r)
to reach the boundary. As a consequence, the scaling behavior of the model can
be obtained from evaluating dissipative avalanches alone, allowing not only to
determine the values of all exponents, but showing also the breakdown of
finite-size scaling.
