title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: On July 3, 2018, Jones was suspended the first two games of the 2018 season for violating the NFL's Substance Abuse policy. On September 23, his first game back from his suspension, Jones rushed six times for 42 yards in a 31–17 loss to the Washington Redskins. The following week, in a 22–0 win over the Buffalo Bills, he had 11 rushes for 65 yards and a touchdown. He took over the starting duties in Week 6, though he continued to share carries with Williams and Montgomery. By Week 9, he had enough rushes to qualify for the NFL leaderboards and took over the top spot in yards-per-rush at 6.02. On November 11, he had 15 carries for a career-high 145 yards and two rushing touchdowns in a 31–12 Week 10 victory over the Miami Dolphins. The following week, he caught his first NFL receiving touchdown and ran for another in a 24–27 loss to Seattle. In Week 12, he scored his fifth touchdown in three games on route to 93 total yards against the Minnesota Vikings. He suffered a knee injury in Week 15 and was placed on injured reserve on December 18, 2018. Overall, he finished the 2018 season with 728 rushing yards, eight rushing touchdowns, 26 receptions, 206 receiving yards, and one receiving touchdown.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In his first two seasons, Jones' averaged 9 touches per game and a league-leading 5.5 yards per carry.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In Week 2 against the Minnesota Vikings, Jones rushed 23 times for 116 yards and a touchdown as the Packers won 21–16. In Week 3 against the Denver Broncos, Jones rushed 10 times for 19 yards and two touchdowns as the Packers won 27–16. During Week 5 against the Dallas Cowboys, Jones finished with 107 rushing yards, 75 receiving yards, and four touchdowns as the Packers won 34–24, earning him NFC Offensive Player of the Week. During "Sunday Night Football" against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 8, Jones finished with 13 carries for 67 rushing yards, seven catches for 159 receiving yards, and two receiving touchdowns as the Packers won 31–24. He was named the NFC Offensive Player of the Week for his performance. In Week 10 against the Carolina Panthers, Jones rushed 13 times for 93 yards and three touchdowns in the 24–16 win. In Week 14 against the Washington Redskins, Jones rushed 16 times for 134 yards and a touchdown in the 20–15 win. During a rematch with the Minnesota Vikings on "Monday Night Football" in Week 16, Jones highlighted a big play with a 56-yard touchdown run. Overall, he finished with 154 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 23 rushes as the Packers won 23–10. In Week 17 against the Detroit Lions, Jones rushed 25 times for 100 yards and caught two passes for 43 yards in the 23–20 win. During the game, Jones played a career-high 75 snaps and surpassed 1,000 rushing yards for the first time in his career. In his 285 touches in the 2019 season, Jones finished with totals of 1,084 rushing yards and 16 rushing touchdowns to go along with 49 receptions for 474 receiving yards and three receiving touchdowns.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In the of the playoffs against the Seattle Seahawks, Jones rushed 21 times for 62 yards and two touchdowns during the 28–23 win. In the against the San Francisco 49ers, Jones rushed 12 times for 56 yards and a touchdown and caught five passes for 27 yards and a touchdown during the 37–20 loss. He was ranked 33rd by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2020.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In Week 2 against the Detroit Lions, Jones rushed 18 times for a career-high 168 yards and two rushing touchdowns, one of which was a 75-yard touchdown, and caught four passes for 68 yards and a receiving touchdown during the 42–21 win. In Week 4 against the Atlanta Falcons on "Monday Night Football", Jones totaled 101 yards from scrimmage and a receiving touchdown during the 30–16 win. In Week 13 against the Philadelphia Eagles, Jones rushed for 130 yards, including a 77-yard touchdown, during the 30–16 win. In Week 15 against the Carolina Panthers, Jones recorded 158 yards from scrimmage and a rushing touchdown during the 24–16 win. On December 21, 2020, he was selected for the 2021 Pro Bowl. Jones finished the 2020 season with 201 carries for 1,104 rushing yards and nine rushing touchdowns to go along with 47 receptions for 355 receiving yards and two receiving touchdowns.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In the of the playoffs against the Los Angeles Rams, Jones rushed for 99 yards and a touchdown during the 32–18 win.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In the against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jones rushed for 27 yards before exiting the game due to an injury during the 31–26 loss. He was ranked 30th by his fellow players on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2021.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: On March 26, 2021, Jones signed a four-year, $48 million contract with the Packers. He has seen his production decrease as head coach Matt LaFleur has increased the usage of second-year teammate A. J. Dillon, failing to reach 1,000 rushing yards for the first time since 2018.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In Week 1 against the New Orleans Saints, Jones rushed five times for just nine yards. He bounced back the following week against the Detroit Lions, rushing for 66 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries, and added six receptions for 48 yards and three receiving touchdowns. He was the first Packers running back to catch three touchdowns in a game since Andy Uram in 1942, as the Packers won 35–17. Jones had his first 100-yard game in a Week 5 25–22 overtime win against the Cincinnati Bengals, tallying 103 yards on 14 carries, including a season-long 57-yard run. In Week 8 against the Arizona Cardinals, with wide receivers Davante Adams, Allen Lazard and Marquez Valdes-Scantling out due to COVID or injury, Jones was the primary target of quarterback Aaron Rodgers, catching a team-high seven passes for 51 yards as the Packers won 24–21.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In Week 10 against the Seattle Seahawks, Jones went down with an MCL sprain. He returned to limited action in a Week 12 win over the Los Angeles Rams. He surpassed 1,000 yards from scrimmage for the third consecutive year in a Week 16 victory over the Cleveland Browns. Jones finished the 2021 season with 171 carries for 799 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns to go along with 52 receptions for 391 receiving yards and six receiving touchdowns.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: The Packers earned a first-round bye and faced off against the San Francisco 49ers in the . Jones had 41 rushing yards on 12 carries but had nine receptions for 129 receiving yards in the 13–10 loss.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: In Week 2, against the Chicago Bears, Jones had 15 carries for 132 rushing yards and one rushing touchdown to go along with three receptions for 38 receiving yards and a receiving touchdown. In Week 4, against the New England Patriots, he had 16 carries for 110 rushing yards in the 27–24 overtime victory.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: Jones is known for wearing wraparound Oakley sunglasses and a sombrero decorated in Packer colors when arriving at a stadium before a game, on the sidelines, and in postgame interviews.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: Jones graduated from UTEP on May 12, 2018, with a degree in multidisciplinary studies, fulfilling a promise he had previously made to his parents that he would finish school even if drafted into the NFL.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: Jones had a close bond with his father, Alvin Sr., who died on April 6, 2021, from COVID-19. Jones Sr. was cremated following his death, with the ashes put into a chain for Aaron. During a game against the Detroit Lions, he lost the chain upon scoring a touchdown (one of four that night), but an athletic trainer found it and returned it to him.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: Jones is an ambassador of FTX & receives compensation via cryptocurrency. Jones has also purchased an equity stake in the exchange.


title: Aaron Jones (running back)

text: On November 20, 2017, Jones was cited for a traffic stop, an incident that occurred on October 1. The day the incident occurred, Jones was speeding at 79 MPH at a 55 MPH speed limit, and had possession of marijuana. Jones was arrested and charged with operating with a restricted controlled substance, operating without a valid license, and speeding. Jones pleaded no contest to the charges and was fined for court costs and had his license suspended for six months.


title: Michael Dapaah

text: Michael Dapaah (born 10 August 1991) is a British actor, rapper, and comedian best known for portraying the fictional rapper Big Shaq (also known as Roadman Shaq). He is also known for his mockumentary "SWIL" (Somewhere in London), which focuses on four characters and their journey to success.


title: Michael Dapaah

text: Michael Dapaah was born in 1991 in Croydon, south London, to first-generation Ghanaian immigrants. While he was growing up, his parents wanted him to study science in order to become a doctor, but he was never interested in the subject, instead being more interested in acting and comedy. He also spent time in South Africa as a child. For a time he was in prison. He studied film, acting and theatre at Brunel University and took a course from the National Youth Theatre.


title: Michael Dapaah

text: Dapaah began his career by garnering a social following among the British-African community for his brief comedic parts in shows like "Meet the Adebanjos", which deals with a Nigerian family in London.


title: Michael Dapaah

text: In May 2017 along with friend and fellow Brunel graduate Marv Brown, he launched a mockumentary series on YouTube titled "SWIL" (Somewhere in London) which amassed over 1 million views in its first series. In this series he created the characters MC Quakez and Big Shaq.


title: Michael Dapaah

text: Dapaah saw a rapid growth in public attention when he appeared on Charlie Sloth's BBC Radio 1Xtra show "Fire in the Booth". His comedic rap "Man's Not Hot" (whose backing track was sampled from 67 and Giggs' 2016 track "Let's Lurk") developed into a viral meme, and a studio track version of the song was released on 22 September 2017. The song's music video was released by Dapaah himself on 26 October of the same year; which features cameos from Waka Flocka Flame, Lil Yachty, Dutch rap-group Broederliefde and DJ Khaled, who calls Dapaah's character a "legend".


title: Metra

text: Metra is the commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area serving the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs via the Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and other railroads. The system operates 242 stations on 11 rail lines. It is the fourth busiest commuter rail system in the United States by ridership and the largest and busiest commuter rail system outside the New York City metropolitan area. In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of . The estimated busiest day for Metra ridership occurred on November 4, 2016—the day of the Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series victory rally.


title: Metra

text: Metra is the descendant of numerous commuter rail services dating to the 1850s. The present system dates to 1974, when the Illinois General Assembly established the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) to consolidate all public transit operations in the Chicago area, including commuter rail. The RTA's creation was a result of the anticipated failure of commuter service operated and owned by various private railroad companies in the 1970s. In a 1983 reorganization, the RTA placed commuter rail under a newly formed Commuter Rail Division, which branded itself as Metra in 1985. Freight rail companies still operate four of Metra's routes under purchase-of-service agreements. Metra owns all rolling stock and is responsible for all stations along with the respective municipalities. Since its inception, Metra has directed more than $5 billion into the commuter rail system of the Chicago metropolitan area alongside the CTA.


title: Metra

text: Since its founding in the 19th century, Chicago has been a major Midwestern hub in the North American rail network. It has more trackage radiating in more directions than any other city in North America. Railroads set up their headquarters in the city and Chicago became a center for building freight cars, passenger cars and diesel locomotives. Early commuter services were run by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, Chicago and Northwestern, and Milwaukee Road.


title: Metra

text: By the 1930s, Chicago had the world's largest public transportation system, but commuter rail services started to decline. By the mid-1970s, the commuter lines faced an uncertain future. The Burlington Northern, Milwaukee Road, Chicago and North Western and Illinois Central had been losing money for several years, and were using trainsets with passenger cars dating as far back as the 1920s.


title: Metra

text: To provide stability to the commuter rail system, the Illinois General Assembly formed the Regional Transportation Authority in 1974. Its purpose was to fund and plan the Chicago region's public transportation. After initially using second-hand equipment, the RTA took delivery of the first new EMD F40PH locomotives in 1976. That F40PH fleet is still in service today. The companies that had long provided commuter rail in the Chicago area continued to operate their lines under contract to the RTA.


title: Metra

text: Less than a decade later the Regional Transportation Authority was already suffering from ongoing financial problems. Additionally, two rail providers, the Rock Island Line and the Milwaukee Road, went bankrupt, forcing the RTA to create the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation to operate their lines directly in 1982. In 1983 the Illinois Legislature reorganized the agency. That reorganization left the Regional Transportation Authority in charge of day-to-day operations of all bus, heavy rail and commuter rail services throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. It was also responsible for directing fare and service levels, setting up budgets, finding sources for capital investment and planning. A new Commuter Rail Division was created to handle commuter rail operations; along with CTA and Pace, it was one of RTA's three "service boards."


title: Metra

text: The board of the RTA Commuter Rail Division first met in 1984. In an effort to simplify the operation of commuter rail in the Chicago area, in July 1985 it adopted a unified brand for the entire system–Metra, or Metropolitan Rail. The newly reorganized Metra service helped to bring a single identity to the many infrastructure components serviced by the Regional Transportation Authority's commuter rail system. However, the system is still legally known as the Commuter Rail Division of the RTA.


title: Metra

text: Today, Metra's operating arm, the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation, operates seven Metra owned routes. Four other routes continue to be operated by Union Pacific (formerly Chicago & North Western) and BNSF (formerly Burlington Northern) under contract to Metra. Service throughout the network is provided under the Metra name (in keeping with Metra's goal of providing a single identity for all commuter rail in the region). Metra also owns all rolling stock, controls fares and staffing levels, and is responsible for most of the stations. However, the freight carriers who operate routes under contract use their own employees and control the right-of-way for those routes.


title: Metra

text: In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Metra experienced record ridership and expanded its services. In 1996, Metra organized its first new line, the North Central Service, running from Union Station to Antioch. By 2006, it added new intermediate stops to that same route, extended the Union Pacific West Line from Geneva to Elburn and extended SouthWest Service from Orland Park to Manhattan. In 2012, it boasted 95.8% average on-time performance (measured only for a train's arrivals at its last station no more than six minutes late). It also posted its fourth highest volume in its history despite decreases in employment opportunities in downtown Chicago.


title: Metra

text: Metra continued to seek expansion options and to improve passenger service. Over the past three decades, Metra has invested more than $5 billion into its infrastructure. That investment has been used to purchase new rolling stock, build new stations, renovate tracks, modernize signal systems and upgrade support facilities. In addition to core improvements on the Union Pacific Northwest and Union Pacific West Lines, planning advanced on two new Metra routes, SouthEast Service and the Suburban Transit Access Route ("STAR" Line).


title: Metra

text: Metra also has been marred by allegations and investigations of corruption. In April 2002, board member Don Udstuen resigned from both Metra and his executive job with the Illinois State Medical Society, after admitting to taking bribes to steer Metra contracts to firms associated with former legislator Roger Stanley and pleading guilty to his part in Illinois's Operation Safe Road scandal.


title: Metra

text: In April 2010, Metra's executive director, Phil Pagano, faced investigation for taking an unauthorized $56,000 bonus and was later found to have improperly received $475,000 in vacation pay. The day that the agency's board was scheduled to discuss his fate, Pagano stepped in front of a moving Metra train in an apparent suicide. Around the time of Pagano's death, allegations also surfaced that a Metra employee demanded a $2,000 payoff from the studio that used Metra in the 2011 film "Source Code". That employee was later relieved of his duties, and retired.


title: Metra

text: In June 2013, Metra CEO Alex Clifford abruptly resigned his position with no public comment. It gradually was reported that his exit had been demanded by the Metra board, which negotiated a $871,000 severance package including a non-disclosure agreement. Clifford's ouster was allegedly arranged because he rejected requests for patronage hiring and promotion, including a request to promote a longtime supporter of State Representative Michael Madigan. In the wake of this scandal, five board members resigned. In August 2013, the remaining board members unanimously elected Don Orseno as interim CEO. (The six-member board was operating with reduced membership and thus lacked the authority to elect a permanent CEO. Orseno and Alex Wiggins shared duties as co-executive directors.) Orseno's long railroad career, beginning with work to set up trains and check doors for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad played favorably in the board's decision. By October 2013, local officials had restored Metra's board to 11 members. After reviewing four candidates, the re-constituted board formally appointed Orseno CEO of Metra in January 2014.


title: Metra

text: In 2014, "a lengthy history of political patronage hiring at" Metra was reported, based on past files.


title: Metra

text: For a long time, Metra was not being funded enough to keep most equipment and rolling stock up to date. On average, the agency received approximately $700 million a year, but Metra claims to need about $2 billion a year, which only since 2020 has been accomplished. Because of this, Metra had to cut back on new rolling stock, instead resorting to their Rebuild Programs, in which they rebuild railcars and locomotives with newer state of the art utilities. Rebuilds cost only a fraction as much as buying new rolling stock, such as with their Amerail built cars. Rebuild programs can rebuild aging cars for approximately $650,000, whereas buying that same railcar new would be approximately $3 million."


title: Metra

text: Metra serves passengers through stations throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. Each station, unless a route or branch terminus, provides travel toward (inbound) and away from (outbound) downtown Chicago. Therefore, a passenger can connect between the city and a suburb or between two points in the suburbs using Metra service. Although Metra's commuter rail system is designed to connect points all over the Chicago metropolitan area, it does provide some intracity connections within Chicago.


title: Metra

text: Metra trains originate from one of four stations in downtown Chicago. Six lines originate at Union Station. The three Union Pacific lines originate at Ogilvie Transportation Center, formerly and still popularly called North Western Station. The Rock Island District originates at LaSalle Street Station. The Metra Electric District originates at Millennium Station, formerly and still often called Randolph Street Terminal. All four terminals are situated within walking distance of the Chicago Loop, so Metra passengers can easily transfer to a different Metra line upon their arrival downtown. Metra's urban-centric service remains popular with suburban commuters working downtown, reverse commuters, and those who visit Chicago for recreational activities and tourism.


title: Metra

text: Stations are found throughout Chicago, as well as in suburban Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties—an area largely coextensive with the inner ring of the Chicago metropolitan area. One station is located in Kenosha, Wisconsin.


title: Metra

text: Metra operates on 11 lines, most of which date from the mid-19th century. Four lines are operated under purchase-of-service agreements. The BNSF Line service is operated by BNSF Railway. The three lines out of the Ogilvie Transportation Center (formerly North Western Station) are operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The other seven lines are operated by the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Rail Corporation (NIRC), Metra's operating subsidiary. Inbound trains on every line at all times run through to their Chicago terminus, however, many outbound trains do not run through to their respective lines' terminus (for example, most trains on the Union Pacific Northwest Line do not run through to Harvard; instead, terminating at Crystal Lake).


title: Metra

text: Metra proposed two routes in the early 2000s, SouthEast Service, which would connect some portions of the southern suburbs with downtown Chicago, and the Suburban Transit Access Route, which would connect various suburbs with each other without going into downtown. , only the SouthEast Service is still being considered.


title: Metra

text: Several commuter lines were discontinued before Metra was established. The Illinois Central West Line from present-day Millennium Station to Addison, Illinois, (closed 1931), Pennsylvania Railroad line to Valparaiso, Indiana, (closed 1935), New York Central line from LaSalle Street Station to Elkhart, Indiana, (closed 1964), and four Chicago & North Western lines to St. Charles, Aurora, Freeport, and Kenosha-Harvard (all municipalities in Illinois and Wisconsin, closed 1930–51). The Burlington Route had service between Aurora and West Chicago, Illinois (closed 1943). Chicago Eastern Illinois operated commuter service on this line out of Dearborn Station to Dolton and Momence, respectively. The Chicago and Eastern Illinois commuter line to Momence, Illinois, ended in 1935, while the Chicago and Western Indiana service to Dolton, Illinois, was discontinued in 1964. Chicago Great Western had commuter service to DeKalb, Illinois (closed 1906). Santa Fe service to Joliet, Illinois (closed 1903). However, Metra runs service to Joliet, Illinois, on two routes: Heritage Corridor and Rock Island District.


title: Metra

text: Ridership has been slowly declining on all but one line since 2014, as seen below. The figures post-2020 have been drastically affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Though monthly reports from 2022 show heavy improvement over 2021 figures, they are still dramatically below pre-pandemic levels.


title: Metra

text: Transportation in Chicago consists of a public transportation infrastructure allowing for intermodal connections to local, regional, national and international transportation services. Parking lots are available adjacent to most suburban Metra stations for passengers connecting with their train by car. Most parking lots are operated by the municipality they are located in. Fees and fines are also assessed by the local municipality; however, parking is usually free on weekends and most holidays. Mass transit CTA and suburban Pace buses connect with many Metra stations downtown and in the suburbs. Monthly pass holders are offered link-up options with these services. In addition, many intercity bus lines connect with passengers outside of Union Station.


title: Metra

text: The Chicago "L" also has transfers with Metra at some Chicago stations. Most 'L' lines traverse the Loop allowing nearby access to all downtown Metra terminals. There are also transfer points between Metra and the 'L' outside of the Loop, such as transfers from the Union Pacific Northwest Line to the Blue Line at Irving Park and Jefferson Park Transit Center; and from the Union Pacific West Line to the Green Line at Oak Park. 'L' trains announce downtown Metra connections onboard when announcing the next 'L' stop.


title: Metra

text: Union Station doubles as both a Metra station and Amtrak's station in Chicago. In addition to Illinois Service and Hiawatha Service, Amtrak trains run nationwide including service to states spanning both coastlines. Passengers connecting from Ogilvie Transportation Center can access Union Station through its north platforms on the opposite side of Madison Street, with Millennium and LaSalle stations also within a short walking distance of Union Station as well. A number of suburban Metra stations are also shared with Amtrak as well.


title: Metra

text: The South Shore Line, an interurban line connecting Chicago with the Indiana suburbs and South Bend, originates at Millennium Station and operates along much of the Chicago portion of the Electric District line, as far south as 63rd Street. Per a longstanding noncompete agreement, eastbound South Shore trains only stop at shared Electric District stations to board passengers, and westbound South Shore trains only stop to discharge passengers.


title: Metra

text: In regards to the PTC mandate that passed Congress, Metra took steps to meet the deadline. Metra concluded that the December 31, 2015 mandate to have PTC running was an unreasonable requirement. This aligned with the stance taken by much of the railroad industry. This is due to a variety of factors including but not limited to: delays from the government, and the fundamental complexity of building a program from the ground up. Moreover, Metra estimates the cost of implementing the system on their of track in the Chicago region to be over $200 million. The fear is this unfunded mandate will divert scarce capital funds from other essential needs. This includes building and maintaining existing tracks, stations, signals, and other equipment that ensures a safe operating environment for all of Metra's passengers. However, Metra recognizes the need for PTC but needed a more reasonable timeline to implement such a program. This recognition is partially based on Metra's previous accident history. Two noteworthy events were a pair of accidents on the Rock Island District within a span of a couple of years. The first event was a derailment that occurred on October 12, 2003, when a train flew through a 10 mph crossing at 68 mph. A second very similar occurrence happened on September 17, 2005, but was more serious. The latter derailment killed two passengers and injured 117. Both of these incidents could have been prevented if PTC were in place. In both circumstances, PTC would have overridden the engineer and slowed the train down to the appropriate speed to prevent an accident from occurring.


title: Metra

text: Recently, Metra has taken significant steps in the process to fully implementing PTC. On April 22, 2015, the Metra board approved an $80 million contract to Parsons Transportation Group. Parsons was the sole bidder and speaks to the complexities of the project. They will be in charge of incorporating various devices from GPS, radio, to trackside antennas into one cohesive system. The group has some experience in this sector previously as Parsons worked with the southern California commuter rail agency Metrolink to install their system.


title: Metra

text: By the year 2020, Metra completed installation of the Positive Train Control. This came at a capital cost of $400 million and an annual operating cost of $20 million. Metra's PTC system works with the trains of 12 other railroad companies.


title: Metra

text: Fare is determined by the distance traveled by a passenger. Each station along every route has been placed in a specific zone based on its distance from its respective downtown station. The downtown terminal and downtown stations are classified as zone 'A' and each additional zone generally represents an added from the downtown terminus. Multiple stations can be placed in the same zone even though they are on the same line. Fare zones include A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J.


title: Metra

text: Several ticketing options exist for passengers. Riders may choose to purchase one-way tickets, 10-ride tickets, weekend passes, day passes, or monthly passes.


title: Metra

text: Metra allows some travelers to purchase reduced fare tickets or even ride for free. These reduced fare and free ride programs are administered by Metra and the RTA. Some pre-college students, youth, senior citizens, members of the United States Armed Forces and persons with disabilities may qualify for these programs. Time-based and geographical restrictions apply to these programs and passengers must ensure they qualify before attempting to purchase special tickets or ride for free. Cook County launched The Fair Transit pilot on January 4, 2021, scheduled to initially last for three years. Under the pilot, all riders on the Metra Electric and Rock Island lines will pay Metra's reduced fare rates.


title: Metra

text: On the Union Pacific North Line, passengers headed to an event at may ride to the event for free after showing their Ravinia Festival e-ticket to the conductor.


title: Metra

text: Metra employees, the Metra Police Department and other public safety agencies are responsible for maintaining safety and security on its lines, aboard its trains and at stations all to various degrees. Although rail transport is one of the safest forms of land travel, compromises to Metra's safety and security can occur through pedestrian accidents, suicide attempts, vehicle collisions, derailment, terrorism and other incidents. Failing to maintain safety and security can result in equipment and infrastructure damage, extensive service disruptions, traumatic injuries and loss of life. Therefore, Metra and other agencies consider safety a top priority and dedicate a significant amount of resources to combat these dangers.


title: Metra

text: Starting in the early summer of 2013, Metra has announced plans to up police patrols on to the seven lines the agency operates: the Milwaukee Districts North and West, the North Central Service, the Heritage Corridor, South West Service, Rock Island, and Electric District. The police patrols will not be on the BNSF and Union Pacific train lines because those lines are operated by the railroads that own them and security falls to those companies. When asked why there were increasing patrols spokesman Michael Gillis said, "There is no particular reason, other than the fact that we want to be more proactive and more deliberately visible to our riders".


title: Metra

text: The Metra Police Department is a special law enforcement agency charged with providing police services to passengers, employees, equipment and property. The department has more than 100 police officers and is responsible for the safety of all routes and stations. In an effort to help coordinate emergency preparedness and incident management, all Metra police officers are certified in the National Incident Management System. In addition, Metra police works with the Chicago Police Department as a member of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy. Thomas A. Cook was the only Metra police officer that has been killed in the line of duty thus far.


title: Metra

text: The focus on rail safety by Metra comes from many fronts beyond operations including emergency preparedness and public awareness. The setup of railway platforms, use of grade crossing signals and horn blasts make up a critical system used to communicate movements of commuter trains to pedestrians and vehicles. Outside of these operational components, Metra aggressively pursues safety through public awareness. Metra utilizes its own Operation Lifesaver program and uses it to help spread safety messages. Metra also holds events promoting rail safety at schools and organizes a safety poster contest awarding winners with prizes and features their posters on monthly passes and at stations.


title: Metra

text: Metra has been honored with several E. H. Harriman Awards for employee safety, most recently with a Bronze award in class B (line-haul railroads with between 4 and 15 million employee hours per year) for 2005. Previous Harriman Awards conferred to Metra include Gold awards for 2003 and 2004 and a Silver award for 2002.


title: Metra

text: Metra expects to implement positive train control on its entire system in 2019, four years after the federally mandated 2015 deadline.


title: Metra

text: There were 156 non-employee fatalities involving Metra equipment and Metra owned track between 2001 and 2010. On average 15 people were killed annually based on data from that decade. The highest number of fatalities in a year throughout that time occurred in 2002, with 23 deaths and in 2010, with 21 deaths. The majority of these fatalities occurred at grade crossings and on railway involving an impact with a train; only four deaths involved passengers aboard the train.


title: Metra

text: The worst commuter rail disaster in Illinois occurred before the formation of Regional Transportation Authority. The 1972 Chicago commuter rail crash consisted of a two train collision on the Metra Electric, then under the control of the Illinois Central. The collision resulted in 45 deaths and 332 injuries. Two decades later, Metra experienced its first rail disaster, the 1995 Fox River Grove bus–train collision. This accident involved a collision of a Union Pacific Northwest Line train and a school bus at a grade crossing resulting in 21 injuries and the deaths of seven high school students. In 2003, another incident involved a Rock Island District train derailing while switching from one track to another, injuring 45 passengers. In 2005, a train carrying 200 passengers along the same stretch of track derailed and then collided with a steel bridge resulting in two deaths and 117 injured. The cause of both accidents was ruled to be human error; the trains were going at speeds in excess of when they should have been going .


title: Metra

text: On May 11, 2022, Metra train #1242 collided with a box truck at on the Metra BNSF Line, resulting in four injuries, and one death. The passenger who was killed, a 72-year-old woman from Downers Grove, was ejected from a window of the train during the collision. This incident, as of May 2022, is the second incident in Metra's history that resulted in a passenger fatality.


title: Metra

text: In addition to the loss of life, injuries, damage and service disruptions caused by accidents, Metra and other transportation agencies have been involved in multimillion-dollar lawsuits and settlements stemming from safety failures. These failures have also resulted in updated safety policies and adjustments of equipment and warning devices.


title: Metra

text: All of Metra's locomotives are diesel-electric locomotives. The bulk of its locomotive fleet consists of F40PH locomotives. The Electric District uses electric multiple units.


title: Daniela Denby-Ashe

text: Daniela Jolanta Denby-Ashe (born 9 August 1978) is an English actress. She is best known for playing Sarah Hills on the soap opera "EastEnders", Margaret Hale on the period drama "North and South", and Janey Harper on the BBC sitcom "My Family". She also played Lorraine Donnegan on the drama series "Waterloo Road".


title: Daniela Denby-Ashe

text: Denby-Ashe was born in North West London on 9 August 1978, the daughter of Polish immigrants; her father's original name was Miroslaw Pszkit. Before her parents married, they decided to adopt a more British-sounding surname, so they each chose a surname they liked from the telephone directory and hyphenated them. Denby-Ashe is fluent in English, Polish, and French, learning the latter from her grandmother, who was raised in France until World War II broke out. She began studying ballet at the age of two and tap at a later stage; from the ages of 10 to 16, she attended several drama schools, including the Corona Academy.


title: Daniela Denby-Ashe

text: Denby-Ashe first gained film experience on the children's video "Nursery Rhymes 2" from Pickwick Video. She appeared in many television commercials as a child actor which then led on to children's drama such as Kevin & Co, as well as the Channel 4 sitcom "Desmond's". Denby-Ashe also appeared briefly alongside Jennifer Saunders and Julia Sawalha in season 3 episode 6 of "Absolutely Fabulous". Her big break came in 1995 when she landed the role of Sarah Hills in the BBC soap opera "EastEnders". She played this character until 1999.


title: Daniela Denby-Ashe

text: The following year she got the role of Janey Harper in the BBC sitcom "My Family". Daniela took a break from "My Family" for the fourth series in 2003, but returned to the role in 2004. The eleventh and final series first aired on BBC One from June 2011.


title: Daniela Denby-Ashe

text: In 2005 she took the lead role of Margaret Hale in the BBC TV drama adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's "North & South", and in 2006 played Mary in the science fiction TV series "Torchwood" episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts". Her other television roles include "Office Gossip", "Rescue Me", "Is Harry on the Boat?", and "The Afternoon Play". From 2003 she appeared in the Radio 4 comedy "Ring Around the Bath".


title: Daniela Denby-Ashe

text: In December 2008 she appeared in BBC Four's supernatural drama series "Crooked House", and in October 2010 she starred in an episode of the ITV detective drama "Midsomer Murders". In April 2009 she appeared in the fourth series of the BBC drama "Waterloo Road" as deceitful supply teacher, Jem Allen. In April 2012, she returned to the drama as a new regular character, Lorraine Donegan. The character then appeared regularly throughout the eighth series.


title: Sodium azide

text: Sodium azide is the inorganic compound with the formula . This colorless salt is the gas-forming component in legacy car airbag systems. It is used for the preparation of other azide compounds. It is an ionic substance, is highly soluble in water and is very acutely poisonous.


title: Sodium azide

text: Sodium azide is an ionic solid. Two crystalline forms are known, rhombohedral and hexagonal. Both adopt layered structures. The azide anion is very similar in each form, being centrosymmetric with N–N distances of 1.18 Å. The ion has an octahedral geometry. Each azide is linked to six centers, with three Na–N bonds to each terminal nitrogen center.


title: Sodium azide

text: The common synthesis method is the "Wislicenus process", which proceeds in two steps in liquid ammonia. In the first step, ammonia is converted to sodium amide by metallic sodium:


title: Sodium azide

text: It is a redox reaction in which metallic sodium gives an electron to a proton of ammonia which is reduced in hydrogen gas. Sodium easily dissolves in liquid ammonia to produce hydrated electrons responsible of the blue color of the resulting liquid. The and ions are produced by this reaction.


title: Sodium azide

text: These reactions are the basis of the industrial route, which produced about 250 tons per year in 2004, with production increasing due to the increased use of airbags.


title: Sodium azide

text: Curtius and Thiele developed another production process, where a nitrite ester is converted to sodium azide using hydrazine. This method is suited for laboratory preparation of sodium azide:


title: Sodium azide

text: Aqueous solutions contain minute amounts of hydrogen azide, the formation of which is described by the following equilibrium:


title: Sodium azide

text: Older airbag formulations contained mixtures of oxidizers and sodium azide and other agents including ignitors and accelerants. An electronic controller detonates this mixture during an automobile crash:


title: Sodium azide

text: The same reaction occurs upon heating the salt to approximately 300 °C. The sodium that is formed is a potential hazard alone and, in automobile airbags, it is converted by reaction with other ingredients, such as potassium nitrate and silica. In the latter case, innocuous sodium silicates are generated. While sodium azide is still used in evacuation slides on modern aircraft, newer-generation automotive air bags contain less sensitive explosives such as nitroguanidine or guanidine nitrate.


title: Sodium azide

text: Due to its explosion hazard, sodium azide is of only limited value in industrial-scale organic chemistry. In the laboratory, it is used in organic synthesis to introduce the azide functional group by displacement of halides. The azide functional group can thereafter be converted to an amine by reduction with either in ethanol or lithium aluminium hydride or a tertiary phosphine, such as triphenylphosphine in the Staudinger reaction, with Raney nickel or with hydrogen sulfide in pyridine.


title: Sodium azide

text: Sodium azide is a versatile precursor to other inorganic azide compounds, e.g., lead azide and silver azide, which are used in detonators as primary explosives. These azides are significantly more sensitive to premature detonation than sodium azide and thus have limited applications. Lead and silver azide can be made via double displacement reaction with sodium azide and their respective nitrate (most commonly) or acetate salts. Sodium azide can also react with the chloride salts of certain alkaline earth metals in aqueous solution, such as barium chloride or strontium chloride to respectively produce barium azide and strontium azide, which are also relatively sensitive primarily explosive materials. These azides can be recovered from solution through careful desiccation.


title: Sodium azide

text: In hospitals and laboratories, it is a biocide; it is especially important in bulk reagents and stock solutions which may otherwise support bacterial growth where the sodium azide acts as a bacteriostatic by inhibiting cytochrome oxidase in gram-negative bacteria; however, some gram-positive bacteria (streptococci, pneumococci, lactobacilli) are intrinsically resistant.


title: Sodium azide

text: It is used in agriculture for pest control of soil-borne pathogens such as "Meloidogyne incognita" or "Helicotylenchus dihystera".


title: Sodium azide

text: Sodium azide can be fatally toxic, and even minute amounts can cause symptoms. The toxicity of this compound is comparable to that of soluble alkali cyanides, although no toxicity has been reported from spent airbags.


title: Sodium azide

text: It produces extrapyramidal symptoms with necrosis of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. Toxicity may also include hypotension, blindness and hepatic necrosis. Sodium azide increases cyclic GMP levels in the brain and liver by activation of guanylate cyclase.


title: Sodium azide

text: Sodium azide solutions react with metallic ions to precipitate metal azides, which can be shock sensitive and explosive. This should be considered for choosing a non-metallic transport container for sodium azide solutions in the laboratory. This can also create potentially dangerous situations if azide solutions should be directly disposed down the drain into a sanitary sewer system. Metal in the plumbing system could react, forming highly sensitive metal azide crystals which could accumulate over years. Adequate precautions are necessary for the safe and environmentally responsible disposal of azide solution residues.


title: Duns Scotus

text: John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and William of Ockham.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus was given the scholastic accolade "Doctor Subtilis" ("the subtle doctor") for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1993.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Little is known of Duns Scotus apart from his work. His date of birth is believed to have been sometime between December 23, 1265 and March 17, 1266. He was born into a leading family of the region. The reputed site of his birth, in front of the Pavilion Lodge, near the North Lodge of Duns Castle in Scotland, is now marked by a cairn which was erected in 1966 by the Franciscan friars of the United Kingdom to mark the 700th anniversary of his birth. Duns Scotus received the religious habit of the Order of Friars Minor at Dumfries, where his uncle, Elias Duns, was guardian.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus's age is based on the first certain date for his life, that of his ordination to the priesthood at St Andrew's, Northampton, England, on 17 March 1291. The minimum canonical age for receiving holy orders is 25 and it is generally assumed that he would have been ordained as soon as it was permitted. That his contemporaries called him Johannes Duns, after the medieval practice of calling people by their Christian name followed by their place of origin, suggests that he came from Duns, in Berwickshire, Scotland.


title: Duns Scotus

text: According to tradition, Duns Scotus was educated at a Franciscan "studium generale" (a medieval university), a house behind St Ebbe's Church, Oxford, in a triangular area enclosed by Pennyfarthing Street and running from St Aldate's to the Castle, the Baley and the old wall, where the Friars Minor had moved when the University of Paris was dispersed in 1229–30. At that time there would have been about 270 persons living there, of whom about 80 would have been friars.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus appears to have been in Oxford by 1300, as he is listed among a group of friars for whom the provincial superior of the English ecclesiastical province (which included Scotland) requested faculties from the Bishop of Lincoln for the hearing of confessions. He took part in a disputation under the regent master, Philip of Bridlington in 1300–01. He began lecturing on Peter Lombard's "Sentences" at the prestigious University of Paris towards the end of 1302. Later in that academic year, however, he was expelled from the University of Paris for siding with Pope Boniface VIII in his feud with King Philip IV of France over the taxation of church property.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus was back in Paris before the end of 1304, probably returning in May. He continued lecturing there until, for reasons that are still mysterious, he was dispatched to the Franciscan "studium" at Cologne, probably in October 1307. According to the 15th-century writer William Vorilong, his departure was sudden and unexpected. He was relaxing or talking with students in the "Prato clericorum" or "Pre-aux-Clercs" – an open area of the Rive Gauche used by scholars for recreation – when orders arrived from the Franciscan Minister General; Scotus left immediately, taking few or no personal belongings.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus died unexpectedly in Cologne in November 1308; the date of his death is traditionally given as 8 November. He is buried in the Church of the Friars Minor there. His sarcophagus bears the Latin poem:


title: Duns Scotus

text: The story about Duns Scotus being buried alive, in the absence of his servant who alone knew of his susceptibility to coma, is probably a myth. The first known attestation of this theme dates from around 1400. Among many authors, Francis Bacon reported it in his "Historia vitae et mortis".


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus's great work is his commentary on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, which contains nearly all the philosophical views and arguments for which he is well known, including the univocity of being, the formal distinction, less than numerical unity, individual nature or "thisness" (haecceity), his critique of illuminationism and his renowned argument for the existence of God. His commentary exists in several versions. The standard version is the "Ordinatio" (also known as the "Opus oxoniense"), a revised version of lectures he gave as a bachelor at Oxford. The initial revision was probably begun in the summer of 1300 – see the remarks in the Prologue, question 2, alluding to the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, news of which probably reached Oxford in the summer of 1300. It was still incomplete when Scotus left for Paris in 1302. The original lectures were also transcribed and recently published as the "Lectura".


title: Duns Scotus

text: The two other versions of the work are Scotus's notes for the Oxford lectures, recently published as the "Lectura", the first book of which was probably written in Oxford in the late 1290s, and the "Reportatio parisiensis" (or "Opus parisiense"), consisting of transcriptions of the lectures on the "Sentences" given by Scotus when he was in Paris. A "reportatio" is a student report or transcription of the original lecture of a master. A version that has been checked by the master himself is known as a "reportatio examinata".


title: Duns Scotus

text: By the time of Scotus, these 'commentaries' on the "Sentences" were no longer literal commentaries. Instead, Peter Lombard's original text was used as a starting point for highly original discussions on topics of theological or philosophical interest. For example, Book II Distinction 2, about the location of angels, is a starting point for a complex discussion about continuous motion, and whether the same thing can be in two different places at the same time (bilocation). In the same book, Distinction 3, he uses the question of how angels can be different from one another, given that they have no material bodies, to investigate the difficult question of individuation in general.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus wrote purely philosophical and logical works at an early stage of his career, consisting of commentaries on Aristotle's "Organon". These are the "Questions" on Porphyry's "Isagoge" and Aristotle's "Categories", "Peri hermeneias", and "De sophisticis elenchis", probably dating to around 1295. His commentary on Aristotle's "Metaphysics" was probably written in stages, the first version having started around 1297, with significant additions and amendments possibly after the completion of the main body of the "Ordinatio". His "Expositio" on the "Metaphysics" was lost for centuries but was recently rediscovered and edited by Giorgio Pini.


title: Duns Scotus

text: In addition, there are 46 short disputations called "Collationes", probably dating from 1300 to 1305; a work in natural theology ("De primo principio"); and his "Quaestiones Quodlibetales", probably dating to Advent 1306 or Lent 1307.


title: Duns Scotus

text: A number of works once believed to have been written by Scotus are now known to have been misattributed. There were already concerns about this within two centuries of his death, when the 16th-century logician Jacobus Naveros noted inconsistencies between these texts and his commentary on the "Sentences", leading him to doubt whether he had written any logical works at all. "The Questions on the Prior Analytics" ("In Librum Priorum Analyticorum Aristotelis Quaestiones") were also discovered to be mistakenly attributed. In 1922, Grabmann showed that the logical work "De modis significandi" was actually by Thomas of Erfurt, a 14th-century logician of the modist school. Thus the claim that Martin Heidegger wrote his habilitation thesis on Scotus is only half true, as the second part is actually based on the work by Erfurt.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus' view of universals is known as Scotistic realism. Scotus is generally considered to be a realist (as opposed to a nominalist) in that he treated universals as real, but he held that they exist both in particular things and as concepts in the mind (as opposed to a Platonic "third realm"). He attacks a position close to that later defended by Ockham, arguing that things have a common nature – for example the humanity common to Socrates, Plato, and Plutarch.


title: Duns Scotus

text: He followed Aristotle in asserting that the subject matter of metaphysics is "being qua being" ("ens inquantum ens"). Being in general ("ens in communi"), as a univocal notion, was for him the first object of the intellect.


title: Duns Scotus

text: The doctrine of the univocity of being implies the denial of any real distinction between essence and existence. Aquinas had argued that in all finite being (i.e. all except God) the essence of a thing is distinct from its existence. Scotus rejected the distinction. Scotus argued that we cannot conceive of what it is to be something, without conceiving it as existing. We should not make any distinction between whether a thing exists ("si est") and what it is ("quid est") for we never know whether something exists unless we have some concept of what we know to exist.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus elaborates a distinct view on hylomorphism, with three important strong theses that differentiate him. He held: 1) that there exists matter that has no form whatsoever, or prime matter, as the stuff underlying all change, against Aquinas (cf. his "Quaestiones in Metaphysicam" 7, q. 5; "Lectura" 2, d. 12, q. un.), 2) that not all created substances are composites of form and matter (cf. "Lectura" 2, d. 12, q. un., n. 55), that is, that purely spiritual substances do exist, and 3) that one and the same substance can have more than one substantial form – for instance, humans have at least two substantial forms, the soul and the form of the body ("forma corporeitas") (cf. "Ordinatio" 4, d. 11, q. 3, n. 54). He argued for an original principle of individuation (cf. "Ordinatio" 2, d. 3, pars 1, qq. 1–6), the "haecceity" as the ultimate unity of a unique individual ("haecceitas", an entity's 'thisness'), as opposed to the common nature ("natura communis") feature existing in any number of individuals. For Scotus, the axiom stating that only the individual exists is a dominating principle of the understanding of reality. For the apprehension of individuals, an intuitive cognition is required, which gives us the present existence or the non-existence of an individual, as opposed to abstract cognition. Thus the human soul, in its separated state from the body, will be capable of knowing the spiritual intuitively.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Like other realist philosophers of the period (such as Aquinas and Henry of Ghent) Scotus recognised the need for an intermediate distinction that was not merely conceptual but not fully real or mind-dependent either. Scotus argued for a formal distinction ("distinctio formalis a parte rei"), which holds between entities which are inseparable and indistinct in reality but whose definitions are not identical. For example, the personal properties of the Trinity are formally distinct from the Divine essence. Similarly, the distinction between the 'thisness' or "haecceity" of a thing is intermediate between a real and a conceptual distinction. There is also a formal distinction between the divine attributes and the powers of the soul.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus was an Augustinian-Franciscan theologian. He is usually associated with theological voluntarism, the tendency to emphasize God's will and human freedom in all philosophical issues. The main difference between Aquinas's rational theology and that of Scotus is that Scotus believed certain predicates may be applied univocally – with exactly the same meaning – to God and creatures, whereas Aquinas insisted that this is impossible and that only analogical predication can be employed, in which a word as applied to God has a meaning different from, although related to, the meaning of that same word as applied to creatures. Duns struggled throughout his works in demonstrating his univocity theory against Aquinas's analogy doctrine.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus gave the lecture, "Lectura" I 39, during 1297–1299 to refute the view that everything is necessary and immutable. He claims that the aim of this lecture has two points ("Lectura" I 39, §31): first, to consider the contingency in what is ("de contingentia in entibus"); second, to consider how God's certain knowledge is compatible with the contingency of things.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus tries to defend the validity of Christian theology against the attack of ancient philosophers. The main argument is unpacked in "Lectura" I 39, §§49–53. Scotus argues that a necessary being (God) is able to have contingent knowledge, and that although this knowledge is contingent, it is not necessarily mutable and temporal by that very fact.


title: Duns Scotus

text: In "Lectura" I 39 §1, Scotus asks, "whether God has determinate knowledge of things according to every aspect of their existence, as according to being in the future." He presents a counterview which claims that God cannot have determinate knowledge of the future. To support this counterview, he uses Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" IX.


title: Duns Scotus

text: In the following arguments, Scotus does not attempt to contradict Aristotle. He does not affirm or reject the ideas of Aristotle. The only issue he argues against is the proposition that God cannot have determinate knowledge of the future. Scotus appears to try to fully demonstrate that Aristotle's text is not contradictory to the Christian doctrine of God.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus argues that God wills with one single volition ("unica volitione") whatever he wills. God has one volition "ad intra", but this one volition can be related to many opposite things "ad extra". God can simultaneously will one thing at time 1 and the opposite thing at time 2.


title: Duns Scotus

text: There are various possible interpretations of Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" IX. For example, John Buridan (ca. 1300–1362) thought the Scotistic contingency theory was an Aristotelian view. Buridan's judgment is all the more possible because of at least four reasons: (1) Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" IX, 19a23-25 can be interpreted like the Scotistic contingency theory; (2) Scotus himself does not refute Aristotle's "De Interpretatione" IX in "Lectura" I 39 §§49–53; (3) Scotus, rather, tries to formulate his contingency theory with the help of other works of Aristotle in "Lectura" I 39 §§51, 54; (4) Scotus introduces the diachronic feature of God's volition to his contingency theory as well as the synchronic feature.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus argued that it is better to construct a metaphysical argument for the existence of God, rather than the more common physical argument from motion favoured by Aquinas, following Aristotle. Though the version in "De Primo Principio" is the most complete and final version, the "Ordinatio" proof is usually offered. However, the "De Primo" version is fascinating and worth looking into for a wider understanding of the argument as well as Scotus's metaphysical underpinnings for his argument for God's existence, but the "Ordinatio" version will be followed here. Briefly, Scotus begins his proof by explaining that there are two angles we must take in arguing for the existence of an actually infinite being. First from the view of the Relative Properties of God and second from the Absolute Properties of God. Relative properties are those which are predicable of God in relation to creation; absolute properties are those which belong to God whether or not He chose to create. Under the first heading of Relative Properties, Scotus argues for a triple primacy of efficiency, finality and pre-eminence. From there he shows that one primacy implies the others, and finally there can only be one nature that is the First Efficient Cause, Ultimate End, and the Most Perfect Nature. From there the Subtle Doctor discusses the Absolute Properties of God. The First Being is intellectual and volitional, and the intellect and will are identical with the essence of this supreme nature. The First Being is also infinite being. While discussing the infinity of God, Scotus resurrects Anselm's argument and responds to the criticism that Anselm makes an illicit leap from concept to reality. Finally, he gives a definite answer of "yes" to the question of whether there exists an actually infinite being. The very next question of the "Ordinatio" deals with the unicity of the nature thus proved to exist. However, the "De Primo Principio" version concludes with this argument.


title: Duns Scotus

text: The proof for the conclusion that "some efficient cause is simply first such that neither can it be an effect nor can it, by virtue of something other than itself, cause an effect" "Ordinatio" I.2.43 runs like this:


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus acknowledges two objections and deals with them accordingly. First is that he begs the question in assuming a first in the series. Here he argues that while many admit an infinite regress in an accidentally ordered series of causes, no philosopher admits infinite regress in an essentially ordered series. Scotus explains the differences between the two and offers proofs for the conclusion that an infinity of essentially ordered causes in a series is impossible. Second, it is objected that his proof is not really a demonstration since it begins with a contingent premise. That something is produced is contingent and not necessary. Therefore, the proof proceeds from a contingent and not a necessary premise. Scotus says that while that is true, it is utterly manifest that things are produced or effected. But in order to respond, Scotus makes a modal move and reworks the argument. Now he argues from the possibility of production. "It is possible that something can be produced" is a necessary proposition. From there he is able to conclude that it is possible that the first efficient cause exists, and if it is possible that it exists, then it does exist. He asserts that the last claim will be proved later in the argument. In the "Lectura" proof, Scotus argues the following way:


title: Duns Scotus

text: For more on this argument, see especially Authors/Duns Scotus/Ordinatio/Ordinatio I/D2/Q2B – The Logic Museum.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus argued against the version of illuminationism that had been defended earlier in the century by Henry of Ghent. In his "Ordinatio" (I.3.1.4) he argued against the sceptical consequences that Henry claimed would follow from abandoning divine illumination. Scotus argued that if our thinking were fallible in the way Henry had believed, such illumination could not, even in principle, ensure "certain and pure knowledge."


title: Duns Scotus

text: Perhaps the most influential point of Duns Scotus's theology was his defense of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (i.e., that Mary herself was conceived without sin). At the time, there was a great deal of argument about the subject. The general opinion was that it was appropriately deferential to the Mother of God, but it could not be seen how to resolve the problem that only with Christ's death would the stain of original sin be removed. The great philosophers and theologians of the West were divided on the subject (indeed, even Thomas Aquinas sided with those who denied the doctrine). The feast day had existed in the East (though in the East, the feast is just of the Conception of Mary) since the seventh century and had been introduced in several dioceses in the West as well, even though the philosophical basis was lacking. Citing Anselm of Canterbury's principle, ""potuit, decuit, ergo fecit"" (He [i.e., God] could do it, it was appropriate, therefore He did it), Duns Scotus devised the following argument: Mary was in need of redemption like all other human beings, but through the merits of Jesus' crucifixion, given in advance, she was conceived without the stain of original sin. God could have brought it about (1) that she was never in original sin, (2) she was in sin only for an instant, (3) she was in sin for a period of time, being purged at the last instant. Whichever of these options was most excellent should probably be attributed to Mary. This apparently careful statement provoked a storm of opposition at Paris, and suggested the line 'fired France for Mary without spot' in the famous poem "Duns Scotus's Oxford," by Gerard Manley Hopkins.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Scotus's argument appears in Pope Pius IX's 1854 declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, "at the first moment of Her conception, Mary was preserved free from the stain of original sin, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ." Scotus's position was hailed as "a correct expression of the faith of the Apostles."


title: Duns Scotus

text: Another of Scotus's positions also gained official approval of the Catholic Church: his doctrine on the universal primacy of Christ became the underlying rationale for the feast of Christ the King instituted in 1925.


title: Duns Scotus

text: During his pontificate, Pope John XXIII recommended the reading of Duns Scotus's theology to modern theology students.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Duns Scotus was long honored as a Blessed by the Order of Friars Minor, as well as in the Archdioceses of Edinburgh and Cologne. In the 19th-century, the process was started seeking his recognition as such by the Holy See, on the basis of a "cultus immemorabilis", i.e., one of ancient standing. He was declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II in 1991, who officially recognized his liturgical cult, effectively beatifying him on 20 March 1993.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Owing to Scotus's early and unexpected death, he left behind a large body of work in an unfinished or unedited condition. His students and disciples extensively edited his papers, often confusing them with works by other writers, in many cases leading to misattribution and confused transmission. Most 13th-century Franciscans followed Bonaventura, but the influence of Scotus (as well as that of his arch-rival William of Ockham) spread in the fourteenth century. Franciscan theologians in the late Middle Ages were thus divided between so-called Scotists and Ockhamists. Fourteenth century followers included Francis of Mayrone (died 1325), Antonius Andreas (died 1320), William of Alnwick (died 1333), and John of Bassolis (died 1347), supposedly Scotus's favourite student.


title: Duns Scotus

text: His reputation suffered during the English reformation, probably due to its association with the Franciscans. In a letter to Thomas Cromwell about his visit to Oxford in 1535, Richard Layton described how he saw the court of New College full of pages from Scotus's work, "the wind blowing them into every corner." John Leland described the Oxford Greyfriar's library in 1538 (just prior to its dissolution) as an accumulation of "cobwebs, moths and bookworms."


title: Duns Scotus

text: When in the sixteenth century the Scotists argued against Renaissance humanism, the term "duns" or "dunce" became, in the mouths of humanists and reformers, a term of abuse and a synonym for one incapable of scholarship.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Despite this, Scotism grew in Catholic Europe. Scotus's works were collected into many editions, particularly in the late fifteenth century with the advent of printing. His school was probably at the height of its popularity at the beginning of the seventeenth century; during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries there were special Scotist chairs, e.g. at Paris, Rome, Coimbra, Salamanca, Alcalá, Padua, and Pavia. New ideas were included pseudographically in later editions of his work, such as the principle of explosion, now attributed to Pseudo-Scotus. Scotism flourished well into the seventeenth century, and its influence can be seen in such writers as Descartes and Bramhall. Interest dwindled in the eighteenth century, and the revival of scholastic philosophy, known as neo-Scholasticism, was essentially a revival of Thomistic thinking.


title: Duns Scotus

text: Gerard Manley Hopkins was able to reconcile his religious calling and his vocation as a poet thanks to his reading of Duns Scotus. His poem "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" expresses Duns Scotus's ideas on "haecceity".


title: Duns Scotus

text: The twentieth century saw a resurgence of interest in Scotus, with a range of assessments of his thought.


title: Duns Scotus

text: For one thing, Scotus has received interest from secular philosophers such as Peter King, Gyula Klima, Paul Vincent Spade, and others.


title: Duns Scotus

text: For some today, Scotus is one of the most important Franciscan theologians and the founder of Scotism, a special form of Scholasticism. He came out of the Old Franciscan School, to which Haymo of Faversham (died 1244), Alexander of Hales (died 1245), John of Rupella (died 1245), William of Melitona (died 1260), St. Bonaventure (died 1274), Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta (died 1289), John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1292), Richard of Middletown (died c. 1300), etc., belonged. He was known as "Doctor Subtilis" because of the subtle distinctions and nuances of his thinking. Later philosophers in the sixteenth century were less complimentary about his work and accused him of sophistry. This led to the word "dunce," which developed from the name "Dunse" given to his followers in the 1500s, becoming used for "somebody who is incapable of scholarship."


title: Duns Scotus

text: An important question since the 1960s has revolved over whether Scotus's thought heralded a change in thinking on the nature of 'being,' a change which marked a shift from Aquinas and other previous thinkers; this question has been particularly significant in recent years because it has come to be seen as a debate over the origins of 'modernity.' This line of argument first emerged in the 1960s among popular French philosophers who, in passing, singled out Duns Scotus as the figure whose theory of univocal being changed an earlier approach which Aquinas had shared with his predecessors. Then, in 1990, the historian of philosophy Jean-Francois Courtine argued that, between the time of Aquinas in the mid-thirteenth century and Francisco Suárez at the turn of the seventeenth, a fundamentally new approach to being was developed, with Scotus taking a major part in its development. During the 1990s, various scholars extended this argument to locate Scotus as the first thinker who succumbed to what Heidegger termed 'onto-theology'.


title: Duns Scotus

text: In recent years, this criticism of Scotus has become disseminated in particular through the writings of the 'Radical Orthodox' group of theologians, drawing on John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock. The Radical Orthodox model has been questioned by Daniel Horan and Thomas Williams, both of whom claim that Scotus's doctrine of the univocity of being is a semantic, rather than an ontological theory. Both thinkers cite Ord. 1, d. 3, pars 1, q. 3, n. 163, in which Scotus claims that "This [univocally] is how all the authoritative passages one might find on this topic in the Metaphysics or Physics should be interpreted: in terms of the ontological diversity of those things to which the concept is attributed, which is compatible with there being one concept that can be abstracted from them". Such a quotation seems to refer to epistemology, with abstracted concepts, rather than with ontology, which Scotus admits can be diverse.


title: Duns Scotus

text: In 2012 Fernando Muraca directed for TVCO and the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate the biopic "Blessed Duns Scotus: Defender of the Immaculate Conception" in Italian.


title: Duns Scotus

text: It centers on the debate at the Paris University with glimpses of his infancy and Franciscan vocation.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Cat intelligence is the capacity of the domesticated cat to solve problems and adapt to its environment. Researchers have shown feline intelligence to include the ability to acquire new behavior that applies knowledge to new situations, communicating needs and desires within a social group and responding to training cues.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The brain of the domesticated cat is about long and weighs . If a typical cat is taken to be long with a weight of , then the brain would be at 0.91% of its total body mass, compared to 2.33% of total body mass in the average human. Within the encephalization quotient proposed by Jerison in 1973, values above one are classified big-brained, while values lower than one are small-brained. The domestic cat is attributed a value of between 1–1.71; relative to human value, that is 7.44–7.8.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The largest brains in the family Felidae are those of the tigers in Java and Bali. It is debated whether there exists a causal relationship between brain size and intelligence in vertebrates. Correlations have been shown between these factors in a number of experiments; however, correlation does not imply causation. Most experiments involving the relevance of brain size to intelligence hinge on the assumption that complex behavior requires a complex (and therefore intelligent) brain; however, this connection has not been consistently demonstrated.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The surface area of a cat's cerebral cortex is approximately ; furthermore, a theoretical cat weighing has a cerebellum weighing , 0.17% of the total weight.


title: Cat intelligence

text: According to researchers at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, the physical structure of the brains of humans and cats is very similar. The human brain and the cat brain both have cerebral cortices with similar lobes.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The number of cortical neurons contained in the brain of the cat is reported to be 203 million. Area 17 of the visual cortex was found to contain about 51,400 neurons per mm. Area 17 is the primary visual cortex.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Analyses of cat brains have shown they are divided into many areas with specialized tasks that are vastly interconnected and share sensory information in a kind of hub-and-spoke network, with a large number of specialized hubs and many alternative paths between them. This exchange of sensory information allows the brain to construct a complex perception of the real world and to react to and manipulate its environment.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The thalamus of the cat includes a hypothalamus, an epithalamus, a lateral geniculate nucleus, and additional secondary nuclear structures.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The domestic cat brain also contains the hippocampus, amygdala, frontal lobes (which comprise 3 to 3.5% of the total brain in cats, compared to about 25% in humans), corpus callosum, anterior commissure, pineal gland, caudate nucleus, septal nuclei and midbrain.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Grouse "et al." (1979) ascertained the neuroplasticity of kittens' brains, with respect to control of visual stimulus correlated with changes in RNA structures. In a later study, it was found that cats possess visual-recognition memory, and have flexibility of cerebral encoding from visual information.


title: Cat intelligence

text: A cognitive support diet for felines is a food that is formulated in order to improve mental processes like attention, short and long-term memory, learning, and problem solving. Claims for cognitive support appear on a number of kitten formulations to help with brain development, as well as diets aimed at seniors to help prevent cognitive disorders. These diets typically focus on supplying Omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids, taurine, vitamins, and other supporting supplements that have positive effects on cognition.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The omega-3 fatty acids are a key nutrient in cognition for felines. They are essential for felines as they cannot be synthesized naturally and must be obtained from the diet. Omega-3 fatty acids that support brain development and function are alpha-linolenic acid, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Fish oils, fish and other marine sources provide a very rich source of DHA and EPA. Alpha-linolenic acid can be acquired from oils and seeds.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Omega-6 fatty acids are also needed in feline cognition diets. The important omega-6 fatty acid that plays a role in brain support and cognition is arachidonic acid. Arachidonic acid, or AA, is found in animal sources such as meat and eggs. AA is required in cat diets, as felines convert insignificant amounts of it from linoleic acid due to the limited enzyme delta-6 desaturase. Like DHA, arachidonic acid is often found in the brain tissues of cats and seems to have a supporting role in brain function. In a 2000 study completed by Contreras "et al.", it was found that DHA and AA made up 20% of the fatty acids in the mammalian brain. Arachidonic acid makes up high amounts in the membrane of most cells and has many pro-inflammatory actions.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Taurine is an amino acid, which is essential in cat diets due to their low capacity to synthesize it. Taurine has the ability to cross the blood–brain barrier in the brain, it plays a role in many neurological functions, especially in the visual development. Without taurine, felines can have an abnormal morphology in the cerebellum and visual cortex. When cats were fed a diet deficient in taurine, this led to a decrease in the concentration of taurine in the retina of the eye. This resulted in deterioration of the photoreceptors, followed by complete blindness.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Choline is a water-soluble nutrient that prevents and improves epilepsy and cognitive disorders. Supplementation is part of therapy for cats with seizures and feline cognitive dysfunction, despite this treatment being mostly based on anecdotal evidence and research done on dogs. It is the precursor to nerve chemicals like dopamine and acetylcholine, making it important for proper functioning of the nervous system.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The WAIS test is a measure of intelligence in adult "Homo sapiens". The test scores on four criteria: verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory and processing speed.


title: Cat intelligence

text: In controlled experiments, cats showed that they had fully developed concepts of object permanence, meaning that sensorimotor intelligence is completely developed in cats. For human infants, tests involving multiple invisible displacements of an object are used to assess the beginning of mental representation in the sixth and last stage of sensorimotor intelligence. The cats' searches on these tasks were consistent with representation of an unsensed object and fully developed sensorimotor intelligence.


title: Cat intelligence

text: In 2009, an experiment was conducted where cats could pull on a string to retrieve a treat under a plastic screen. When presented with one string, cats had no trouble getting the treats, but when presented with multiple strings, some of which were not connected to treats, the cats were unable to consistently choose the correct strings, leading to the conclusion that cats do not understand cause and effect in the same way that humans do.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Cats have complex dreams while sleeping, retaining and recalling long sequences of events while they are asleep, as many other animals do. A dreaming cat will sometimes have rapid, uncontrolled facial, whisker, paw, and abdominal movements.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Taken as a whole, cats have excellent memories. In experimental conditions, the memory of a cat was demonstrated as having an information-retention or recall of a duration totaling as much as 10 years. In wild cats, such as lions, selective pressures have demonstrated that these animals exhibit extensive long-term memory in relation to problem-solving for at least seven months after solution. However, relationships with humans, individual differences in intelligence, and age may all affect memory. Cats easily adapt to their current environment because they can adapt their memories of past environments throughout their lives.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The period during which the cat is a kitten is the time when the cat learns and memorizes survival skills, which are acquired through observation of their mothers and playing with other cats. Playing, in fact, constitutes more than fun for a kitten, for it is essential for ranking social order, building hunting skills, and for generally exercising for the adult roles.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The first two to seven weeks are a particularly critical time for kittens, for it is during this period that they bond with other cats. It has been suspected that without any human contact during this time, the cat would forever mistrust humans, or would at least take many times longer than with such early exposure before the mistrust might begin to erode. They also may not extend trust developed with a select group of familiar nonthreatening humans as readily to strangers. Many cats with exposure during this period as kittens still do not automatically trust strangers.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Just as in humans, advancing age may affect memory in cats. Some cats may experience a weakening of both learning ability and memory that affects them adversely in ways similar to those occurring in poorly aging humans. A slowing of function is normal, and this includes memory. Aging may affect memory by changing the way their brain stores information and by making it harder to recall stored information. Cats lose brain cells as they age, just as humans do.


title: Cat intelligence

text: The older the cat, the more these changes can affect its memory. There have been no studies done on the memories of aging cats, but there is some speculation that, just like people, short-term memory is more affected by aging. In one test of where to find food, cats' short-term memory lasted about 16 hours.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Diseases, such as feline cognitive dysfunction (FCD) – a condition similar to Alzheimer's disease in humans – could also affect cat memory. Symptoms of FCD include disorientation, reduced social interaction, sleep disturbances, and loss of house training. FCD causes degenerative changes in the brain that are the source of the functional impairment.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Edward Thorndike conducted some key experiments on cats' learning capacity. In one of Thorndike's experiments, cats were placed in various boxes approximately with a door opened by pulling a weight attached to it. The cats were observed to free themselves from the boxes by "trial and error with accidental success." Though cats did perform worse on occasion, Thorndike generally found that as cats continued the trials, the time taken to escape the boxes decreased in most cases.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Thorndike considered the cat to follow the "law of effect", which states that responses followed by satisfaction (i.e. a reward) become more likely responses to the same stimulus in the future. Thorndike was generally skeptical of the presence of intelligence in cats, criticising sources of the contemporary writing of the sentience of animals as "partiality in deductions from facts and more especially in the choice of facts for investigation."


title: Cat intelligence

text: An experiment was done to identify possible observational learning in kittens. Kittens that were able to observe their mothers performing an experimentally organised act were able to perform the same act sooner than kittens that had observed a non-related adult cat, and sooner than the ones who, being placed in trial and error conditions, observed no other cat performing the act.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Cat intelligence study is mostly from consideration of the domesticated cat. The process of domestication has allowed for closer observation of cat behaviour and in the increased incidence of interspecies communication, and the inherent plasticity of the cat's brain has become apparent as the number of studies in this have increased scientific insight.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Changes in the genetic structure of a number of cats have been identified. This is as a consequence of both domestication practises and the activity of breeding, so that the species has undergone genetic evolutionary change due to human selection. This human selection has been coupled with an initial, naturally occurring selective set of cats, possessing characteristics desirable for the sharing of human habitation and living in Neolithic urban environments.


title: Cat intelligence

text: Cats' intelligence may have increased during their semi-domestication: urban living may have provided an enriched and stimulating environment requiring novel adaptive behaviours. This scavenging behaviour would only have produced slow changes in evolutionary terms, but such changes would have been comparable to the changes to the brain of early primitive hominids who co-existed with primitive cats (like, for example, Machairodontinae, Megantereon and Homotherium) and adapted to savannah conditions.


title: Cat intelligence

text: However, urban living is unlikely to improve the animal's intelligence indefinitely. The cat, both feral and domesticated, is likely to be maintained in an evolutionary stasis by its niche position in the food web.


The ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship, is an international submission grappling competition, organised by the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC). The inaugural tournament was held in Abu Dhabi, UAE in 1998. It has been held every two years since, except in 2021 due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Host countries have included Brazil, China, Finland, Spain, the UK, and the US.


title: ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship

text: Competitors can only participate after winning ADCC trials or by invitation. While most athletes come from the IBJJF Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitive scene, it is open to competitors from any grappling style. The 2022 edition took place in front of 13,000 fans in attendance at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.


text: ADCC is considered the most prestigious submission grappling tournament in the world, and is commonly referred to as "the Olympics of grappling".


text: The competition was created by Sheik Tahnoun Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of the former United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, together with his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor Nelson Monteiro. Royler Gracie characterized this as the beginning of "the modern era of submission grappling".


text: Thousands of submission grappling tournaments around the world use elements of the ADCC format and rule structure. To date, the great majority of ADCC champions have had experience studying the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, whose rules are the most similar to. However, there have been notable exceptions to this, such as Japanese Sanae Kikuta (Judo/Shoot Wrestling), South African Mark Robinson (Judo, Greco-Roman wrestling and Freestyle wrestling, Sumo), and American Mark Kerr (Collegiate/Freestyle Wrestling).


text: For the future of the event the organizer Mo Jassim has plans for adding more women's divisions and allowing reigning absolute champions to compete in weight-classes despite being booked for the main event superfight. It was announced in 2020 that for the first time in the competition's history, there would be more than two years between editions due to the setbacks suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 edition of the ADCC World Championships would then take place in 2022 instead.


text: At the end of 2021, ADCC was awarded with "Promotion of the year" by media outlet Jitsmagazine at the 2021 BJJ Awards as a result of the trials events held that year and the introduction of the ADCC Hall of Fame.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little commercial success, it gained more attention in the 1950s following the success of Orwell's better-known works "Animal Farm" (1945) and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949).


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell recounts Catalonia's revolutionary fervor during his training in Barcelona, his boredom on the front lines in Aragon, his involvement in the interfactional May Days conflict back in Barcelona on leave, his getting shot in the throat back on the front lines, and his escape to France after the POUM was declared an illegal organization.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, "against" totalitarianism and "for" democratic socialism, as I understand it."


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The Spanish Civil War broke out with a military coup in July 1936 after months of tension following a narrow victory by the leftist Popular Front in the February 1936 Spanish general election. Rebelling forces coalesced as the Nationalists under the leadership of General Francisco Franco and attempted to take over cities that remained under government control.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The Republican side, which viewed the Nationalists as fascists, was made up of several factions including socialists, anarchists, and communists. There was infighting between these factions, which Orwell details in his chapters on the May Days of Barcelona.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Orwell left for Spain just before Christmas 1936, shortly after submitting "The Road to Wigan Pier" for publication, the first book in which he explicitly espouses socialism.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Within the first few pages of "Homage to Catalonia", Orwell writes, "I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do." However, it has been suggested that Orwell intended all along to enlist.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Orwell had been told that he would not be permitted to enter Spain without some supporting documents from a British left-wing organisation, so he sought the assistance of the British Communist Party. When its leader, Harry Pollitt, asked if he would join the International Brigades, Orwell replied that he wanted to see for himself what was happening first. After Pollitt refused to help, Orwell contacted the Independent Labour Party (ILP), whose officials agreed to help him. They accredited Orwell as a correspondent for their weekly paper, the "New Leader", which provided Orwell the means to go legitimately to Spain. The ILP issued him a letter of introduction to their representative in Barcelona, John McNair.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Upon arriving in Spain, Orwell is reported to have told McNair, "I have come to Spain to join the militia to fight against Fascism." While McNair also describes Orwell as expressing a desire to write "some articles" for the "New Statesman and Nation" with an intention "to stir working-class opinion in Britain and France", when presented the opportunity to write, Orwell told him writing "was quite secondary and his main reason for coming was to fight against Fascism." McNair took Orwell to the POUM (Catalan: "Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista;" English: Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), an anti-Stalinist communist party.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: By Orwell's own admission, it was somewhat by chance that he joined the POUM: "I had only joined the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with I.L.P. papers." He later notes, "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists." He also nearly joined Communist International's International Column midway through his tour because he thought they were likeliest to send him to Madrid, where he wanted to join the action.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Orwell wrote diaries, made press-cuttings, and took photographs during his time in Spain, but they were all stolen before he left. In May 1937, he wrote the publisher of his previous books saying, "I greatly hope I come out of this alive if only to write a book about it." According to his eventual publisher, ""Homage" was begun in February [1937] in the trenches, written on scraps, the backs of envelopes, toilet paper. The written material was sent to Barcelona to McNair's office, where his wife Eileen Blair, working as a volunteer, typed it out section by section. Slowly it grew into a sizable parcel. McNair kept it in his own room."


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Upon escaping across the French border in June 1937, he stopped at the first post office available to telegram the "National Statesman", asking if it would like a first-hand article. The offer was accepted but the article, "Eye-witness in Barcelona",Eyewitness in Barcelona - George Orwell | Workers' Liberty was rejected by editor Kingsley Martin on grounds that his writing "could cause trouble" (it was picked up by "Controversy"). In the months after leaving Spain, Orwell wrote a number of essays on the war, notably "Spilling the Spanish Beans"Spilling the Spanish Beans | The Orwell Foundation and a praiseful review of Franz Borkenau's "The Spanish Cockpit".


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in April 1938 by Secker & Warburg after being rejected by Gollancz, the publisher of all Orwell's previous books, over concerns about the book's criticism of the Stalinists in Spain. "Gollancz is of course part of the Communism-racket," Orwell wrote to Rayner Heppenstall in July 1937. Orwell had learned of Warburg's potential willingness to publish anti-Stalinist socialist content in June, and in September a deal was signed for an advance of £150 (). "Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Communism; today it is almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Anarchism or 'Trotskyism'," Orwell wrote bitterly in 1938.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The book was not published in the United States until February 1952, with a preface by Lionel Trilling.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The only translation published in Orwell's lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948. A French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39, was not published until 1955, five years after Orwell's death.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Per Orwell's wishes, the original chapters 5 and 11 were turned into appendices in some later editions. In 1986, Peter Davison published an edition with a few footnotes based on Orwell's own footnotes found among his papers after he died.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: The appendices in this summary correspond to chapters 5 and 11 in editions that do not include appendices. Orwell felt these chapters, as journalistic accounts of the political situation in Spain, were out of place in the midst of the narrative and should be moved so that readers could ignore them if they wished.


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: Orwell describes the atmosphere of Barcelona in December 1936. "The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle ... every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle ... every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized." Further to this, "The Anarchists" (referring to the Spanish CNT and FAI) were "in control", tipping was prohibited by workers themselves, and servile forms of speech, such as ""Señor"" or ""Don"", were abandoned. At the Lenin Barracks (formerly the Lepanto Barracks), militiamen were given instruction in the form of "parade-ground drill of the most antiquated, stupid kind; right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at attention in column of threes and all the rest of that useless nonsense".


title: Homage to Catalonia

text: He describes the deficiencies of the POUM workers' militia, the absence of weapons, the recruits mostly boys of sixteen or seventeen ignorant of the meaning of war, half-complains about the sometimes frustrating tendency of Spaniards to put things off until ""mañana"" (tomorrow), notes his struggles with Spanish (or more usually, the local use of Catalan). He praises the generosity of the Catalan working class. Orwell leads to the next chapter by describing the "conquering-hero stuff"—parades through the streets and cheering crowds—that the militiamen experienced at the time he was sent to the Aragón front.