Google Transit has been around for a little bit, but it just got a nice update. Reno and San Diego are the newest cities on board. Nice!

The WP has a great story on researching human’s altruistic nature called If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural. When we give, it activates a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, “For it is in giving that we receive.” But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results — many of them published just in recent months — are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe’s head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests: One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually forgo eating.

What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots — such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman’s experiment — that have been around for a very long time.

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize — even experience vicariously — what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior.

They also have some interesting bits on how damaged brains react to tests, and how different parts of our brains clash with each other over difficult moral questions. Well worth the read.

Photo album of Pisa, Italy

March 30, 2007

Our travel plans hadn’t included Pisa at all. Three and a half weeks only takes you so many places. But our travel ended up taking us through the city on our way to Paris, so we tried to make the best of our half day there. Wandering north from the train station we grabbed a quick bite at the first open café we found. Quiche and tea, not a bad start to the day, and closest thing to breakfast I can hope for. Santa Maria della Spina and the rest of the Arno river buildings were gorgeous in the morning light, which reflected into the river with dramatic clouds.

We reached Campo dei Miracoli, home of Duomo, the baptistery, and the famous leaning tower. It was still early, so there were only a few tour groups there. Wandering around the lawns it seemed everyone else was taking the “support the tower” photos. There was a group of Japanese girls that seemed take about ten photos of different poses, then hand the camera to the next person, and repeat. Thirty minutes later, they had finally run out of batteries or poses, and moved on.

We decided to explore the graveyards to the north and walk along the outer walls to see what else was there. Turns out the graveyards are closed most days, and the outer walls are just outer walls with 60′s apartment buildings on the other side of the street. Not really worth the walk. Walking through the old parts of the city definitely is though. We wandered through the open markets and the various palazzos (like Carovana) before picking a café near the river to have a drink. The people watching was nice, but we eventually had to wander our way back to the train station to leave for France. I wasn’t expecting much from Pisa beyond Campo dei Miracoli, but I found the old city quite charming. I’ll have to return again some time.