IBM is running television ads about its smart toll innovations in Stockholm improving traffic and conserving fuel. It cites three statistics that pop:

• U.S citizens spend 4.2 billion hours per year tied up in traffic delays and congestion.
• Fuel burned due to traffic congestion wastes the oil capacity of 58 supertankers per year. I assume that is in the U.S.
• It claims that a similar smart toll system in this country will save two billion liters of fuel per year.

A post on Wired details lessons to be learned from the traffic patterns of leafcutter ants to avoid congestion and delays, phenomena unknown to that species. Behavior is key.

"One dominating factor in human traffic is egoism," said University of Zoln traffic flow theorist Andreas Schadschneider. "Drivers optimize their own travel time, without taking much care about others. This leads to phantom traffic jams which occur without any obvious reason. Ants, on the other hand, are not egoistic."

Another way of understanding the difference between human and ant navigation decisions, he said, comes from optimization theory. In human traffic, "the user optimum is relevant, whereas in ant traffic it is the system optimum, which can be quite different," and produces a different set of behaviors.

The miracle depicted by Michelangelo’s Hand Of God separates man from other species. It also drives us to do our damndest to destroy the world and ourselves along with it.