Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 May 27

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May 27

How long was the IRT Third Avenue Line (redux)?

On May 20, Metrophil44 asked:

How long was the IRT Third Avenue Line?

I wondered how long this line was, but I can't find the length in the article. -- Metrophil44 (talk) 16:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

And I wrote in the thread:

I haven't found a source for the actual length but have asked a knowledgeable friend. Stay tuned. --174.88.135.200 (talk) 21:27, 22 May 2015 (UTC), corrected 21:30, 22 May 2015 (UTC).

I now have an answer, but it's from a knowledgeable friend of my friend, not from a published source, and I didn't get permission to attribute it. So this should be the correct information but I don't have a suitable reference for it to be used on Wikipedia. According to this unpublished information, the sections of the line were:

From	To	Miles
South Ferry	Chatham Sq.	1.3
City Hall	Chatham Sq.	1.3
Chatham Sq.	149th St.	8.4
149th St.	Gun Hill Rd.	5.5
Fordham Rd.	Bronx Park	0.3

Making 15.2 miles (24.5 km) end to end, plus 1.6 miles (2.6 km) in branches.

I was also given official lengths of the different Manhattan Railway el lines as given out by their chief engineer's office in 1909, but this was before the Dual Contracts extensions and therefore does not represent the final extent of the Third Avenue line.

• Manhattan:

Line	Miles
Second Avenue	7.44
Third Avenue	9.34
Sixth Avenue	10.89
Ninth Avenue	4.78
Suburban	0.15
Total	32.60

• Bronx:

Suburban

5.08

I hope this is useful. --174.88.135.200 (talk) 22:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

These numbers are extremely precise, implying your friend's friend has a source. Is there some reason he can't simply name the source, MTA Museum Brochure, or whatever? μηδείς (talk) 21:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your effort! As Medeis said, these numbers are very precise, thank you. And @Medeis: I wanted to use the length in the German wikipedia article about the Third Avenue Line (not existing yet). -- Metrophil44 (talk) 15:13, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Ipanema_(brand)

There's no article for the Brazilian sandals brand Ipanema. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.224.70 (talk) 05:27, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't appear that the Portuguese Wikipedia has such an article either. Their disambiguation page, pt:Ipanema, contains no footwear entries. -- ToE 06:00, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to create the article yourself! The Portuguese Wikipedia does have an article on Grendene who own and make the brand. Nanonic (talk) 06:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

But (s)he can't! Feel free to participate in the RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 120#Proposal to change the focus of pending changes to change things. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 08:35, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Living brain outside the body

What would the owner of that particular brain experience?

Seeing as we can sustain whole organs outside of the human body, if we did the same with a brain, is it possible at all to theorize what it would experience? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.28.140.226 (talk) 09:50, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Just dreaming, really. Not having access to the external functions of stimuli like touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight, it couldn't do anything else. It would simply be just like being asleep. 82.35.216.24 (talk) 10:15, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

It might be possible to provide it with nerve inputs. We have a cochlear implant and visual prosthesis that work that way now, so it certainly is possible. StuRat (talk) 11:39, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

See also Brain in a vat. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:50, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Isolated brain and William and Mary. DuncanHill (talk) 13:06, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Madness, and death, in short order. μηδείς (talk) 18:47, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
• Stating from the get go that this is impossible, it would most likely be exquisite torture, and not just like being asleep. Compare with phantom pain and phantom limb. Although exact mechanisms are still being studied and disputed, it is likely that a combination of irritated severed nerve endings and mal-adaptation in the cortex case pain and other sensory sensations in the missing body part. That is just in one body part, and can sometimes already be crippling. Now imagine that for a whole body..... I guess you could argue that with the medical technology required to keep a disembodied brain alive (Clarke's three laws|indistinguishable from magic?), you could compensate for these things, but that is firmly in the realm of sci-fi. Fgf10 (talk) 21:55, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Exactly; madness and death in short order. It's like asking what would a kidney do in a toilet, or a liver do in a swimming pool. Brains are organs, not magical gum drop chocolate fairy thingumies. μηδείς (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Not necessarily, the OP specified that we have the magical ability to keep the brain alive, which means no death. If that wasn't the case, even madness couldn't occur, as there would be no conciousness without the rest of the body. Fgf10 (talk) 07:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Which is essentially what I said. The brain would just be in a dream state. There may be some sort of phantom limb syndrome at some point, but why do we not have that when we are asleep? When we are asleep, we can dream and do whatever we want, but our brains are disconnected from the body (so that we don't act out the dreams). KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 07:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

How the heck could you possibly know that? You don't - please stop writing from your own personal guesses. SteveBaker (talk) 17:39, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

OK everyone - how do we know any of the things we're claiming here? What is the source of these pieces of claimed knowledge? Everyone here is just thinking shit up and guessing? The brain is VERY poorly understood - the importance of all of the connections with the rest of the body are not well understood. We don't understand how consciousness works - we don't even have an established definition for the term. So how could we even remotely guess an answer. Please stop doing that. Unless you have some kind of evidence from some kind of human trial - the only correct answer here is "We Don't Know"...all else is bullshit.

SteveBaker (talk) 17:39, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I think you need to take time off the RefDesk. As you say below, this is a Reference Desk, not a tabloid, and certainly swearing is not acceptable. Take a break, relax, and come back when you are ready to join into the spirit of things. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 18:16, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

What is this crap about stopping people saying "shit"? It's not, nowadays, regarded as foul language when used as Steve does above. DuncanHill (talk) 18:20, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not realise that calling everybody else's answers 'bullshit', when such answers were given in good honest faith, was polite parlance around here. Perhaps I should take note of that fact. I shall add that to my list of 'Ways to Insult People on Wikipedia after They Have Given a Good and Honest Attempt to Answer a Question'. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 10:08, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I think Steve was using "bullshit" in its scientific sense of "a supposition based on no evidence whatsoever, with no reasons given for making it". DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

When pigs fly. Assuming magical abilities is outside the purview of this desk. μηδείς (talk) 17:42, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I heard a drama on the radio recently done by Orson Wells about a Mr Donovan whose brain was sustained in a vat by an irresponsible doctor. The brain acquired the ability to force the doctor to do inappropriate things and it all ended badly.Edison (talk) 05:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps surprisingly it is possible to answer this question even without knowing how the brain works. A basic tenet of neuroscience is that all of the brain's interactions with the world outside it are mediated by trains of action potentials travelling along nerve fibers. (And to a far smaller degree, by chemicals circulating in the bloodstream.) Action potentials can easily be artificially generated using stimulating electrodes. It follows that if a machine can keep the brain healthy and can generate the same pattern of nerve impulses that the brain would normally get, the brain would act in exactly the same way as if it was embedded in an intact body. And if the brain shows the same activity, the experiences it implements must be the same. Of course if the machine fails to generate the right pattern of nerve impulses, all bets are off. Looie496 (talk) 16:25, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

The machine that you are describing that could theoretically support a living brain and provide it with all the normal inputs from the external environment as well as from within the body, hormone and chemical levels, impulses from the gut, and things like cholinergic and adrenergic receptors in the blood vessels does potentially exist. It's called the human body. μηδείς (talk) 18:51, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

"Fair Use" or "Public Domain"

The photos on your site. How do I tell if they are "Fair Use" or "Public Domain"?

I am writing a trivia book and would like to use some of your photos, but I am not sure if I will have a copyright issue. It seems if I am reading correctly, the information on your site is "Fair Use" or "Public Domain" as long as I cite the source. Please advise and also let me know if this is not the case, how do I find out who to contact for permission to use a photo? Thanks

D. L. Milner — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dlmilner (talk • contribs) 16:15, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

If you are interested in reusing content from Wikipedia, especially images, please read Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content which contains details on how to do so. There is a section in there on reusing Wikipedia images, which also links to some longer reading if you have further questions. If you have any more specific questions regarding reuse of Wikipedia content, please let us know! --Jayron32 16:43, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Each picture has a different copyright status. All images have a description page; click on the large blue button at the bottom-right with the text "More details" to see it. That page will indicate what the copyright status is. Some pictures are Public Domain, some Fair Use (so they are owned by a third party), and some are on various copy-left licenses, mainly Creative Commons or GNU Free Document License. For example, the picture of the Taj Mahal is file:Taj_Mahal_in_March_2004.jpg, and it is GFDL. 19:00, 27 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LongHairedFop (talk • contribs)

There's no such thing as a "fair use image". Fair use is a set of (poorly defined) limitations on the power of copyright holders to restrict what you do with their works. The copyright owner can't choose to make an image "not fair use". Uses can be fair use or not; images can't. If an image on Wikipedia has a fair-use box in the "licensing" section, that only applies to a particular use of that image on Wikipedia. It says nothing about your rights.

Also, there's no such thing as "public domain as long as I cite the source". If something is in the public domain, it is not copyrighted and there are no copyright restrictions on its use. If an image's page doesn't explicitly say that it is in the public domain, it isn't. -- BenRG (talk) 19:34, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, that last sentence is probably not quite true. I would wager there are quite a few public-domain images on WP servers that are not identified as such. But you would have to find that out some other way.

(Note that the converse is not necessarily safe either — anyone can mark an image as public domain; it's a simple edit. It doesn't make it true.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

As for "public domain so long as I cite the source", the asker is presumably referring to the various atrribution-required licenses used, where the image is free to use if you give attribution (not actually public domain, since the copyright holder still owns the image, they just let you use it). Any Creative Commons license with "BY" in the summary (e.g. CC-BY) has this condition, though it may have additional ones (e.g. CC-BY-SA, which requires you to share any work using the image under an equivalent license - which would require you to freely license your trivia book, so anyone could copy from it so long as they give you credit). MChesterMC (talk) 08:36, 28 May 2015 (UTC)