Etsy Pattern Stores in Loughborough, United Kingdom
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www.sewsofia.co.uk


Free Meeting
Taxation of dividends since 6 April 2016
The change in the taxation rules relating to company dividends since 6th April has been quite controversial, with many commentators saying that the change is effectively a tax on entrepreneurship, whilst others say that it represents a change that makes the taxation of income of entrepreneurs and director/owners more in line with ordinary employees, who pay PAYE and NICs on their income. Whatever the arguments, the new rules are now in force.
Prior to 6 April 2016
Prior to April 2016, dividends were paid to a shareholder along with a tax voucher that contained a “dividend tax credit”, which was an amount that the shareholder was deemed to have paid already in tax on that dividend and could be used to offset part of the shareholder’s tax charge for the year. How it worked was:
Shareholder received a dividend payment of say £900
The dividend was grossed up by 100/90% to £1,000 since 10% was deemed to have been taxed at source (ie, £1,000 – 10% tax = £900 net dividend)
The shareholder for tax purposes declared the gross dividend of £1,000 on his/her Tax Return but was deemed to have paid £100 or 10% in tax (the dividend tax credit).
Up to 5 April 2016, dividends were taxed at 10% for basic rate tax payers and 32.5% for higher rate tax payers. However taking into account the dividend tax credit meant that shareholders could receive dividends of up to £42,785 with no further tax to pay. Any amount above this level was taxed at 32.5% (less 10% deemed to have already been paid).
Post 6 April 2016
Since 6 April 2016, the rules have changed and there is now no deemed dividend tax credit. So a shareholder receiving £900 is deemed to have received £900, no more, no less. The other main changes are as follows:
Every tax payer is given a £5,000 dividend allowance meaning they can receive up to £5,000 in dividends tax free
If any of the £11,000 personal allowance for 2016/17 is not utilised, then this can be added to the £5,000 dividend allowance.
Dividends received between £5,001 and £43,000 where they take the income of a basic rate to where they become a higher rate tax payer) are now taxed at 7.5%. Anything above this level are taxed at 32.5% (38.1% if you are an additional rate tax payer earning above £150,000).
Paul receives a cash dividend of £20,000. His other taxable earned income is £15,000. His £5,000 dividend allowance means only £15,000 of his dividend will be taxed. As his total income is below the higher rate tax threshold of £43,000 for 2016/17, he will pay tax of 7.5% on £15,000 = £1,125 in tax. Under the old rules he would not have had to pay any tax on the dividend.
Nick receives a cash dividend of £50,000. His other taxable earned income is £50,000. After his dividend allowance of £5,000 is taken in account, £45,000 of his cash dividend will be taxed. As Nick is a higher rate tax payer (ie his income is over £43,000), £45,000 of his dividend will be taxed at 32.5% totalling £14,625. Under the old rules Nick would have been taxed on his £50,000 dividend at an effective rate of 25% meaning he would have paid £12,500.
Despite the new rules meaning more tax is now payable by those receiving more than £5,000 in dividends, dividends are still a highly effective way of minimising taxable income and should be used a key tool in personal tax planning.
Tip: Why not consider transferring or issuing shares to a spouse or other family members and friends as part of your personal tax planning activities, including children and grandchildren. Issuing alphabet shares (A ord, B ord shares) via a change in the Articles of a company can also allow you to manage payments of dividends more effectively to family members and other shareholders. The use of bare trusts should also be considered.
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Woodland Pride, Montana
$12.00 W359pf
10.5x7.5 image on 14x11 Paper - 14x10 image on 19x13 Paper - 19.5x13.75 image on 24x18 Paper - 24.5x17.5 image on 26.5x19.5 Paper - 28x20 image on 30x22 Paper - 42x30 image on 44x32 Paper - 45x32 image on 47x34 Paper - 49x35 image on 51x37 Paper - 66.5x47.5 image on 68.5x49.5 Paper - 10.5x7.5 image on 14.5x11.5 Giclée - 14x10 image on 18x14 Giclée - 21x15 image on 25x19 Giclée - 24.5x17.5 image on 28.5x21.5 Giclée - 28x20 image on 32x24 Giclée - 42x30 image on 46x34 Giclée - 45x32 image on 49x36 Giclée - 49x35 image on 53x39 Giclée - 66.5x47.5 image on 70.5x51.5 Giclée - 10.5x7.5 image on 14.5x11.5 Unstretched Canvas - 14x10 image on 18x14 Unstretched Canvas - 21x15 image on 25x19 Unstretched Canvas - 24.5x17.5 image on 28.5x21.5 Unstretched Canvas - 28x20 image on 32x24 Unstretched Canvas - 42x30 image on 46x34 Unstretched Canvas - 45x32 image on 49x36 Unstretched Canvas - 49x35 image on 53x39 Unstretched Canvas - 66.5x47.5 image on 70.5x51.5 Unstretched Canvas -
© Art Wolfe
Art Wolfe (born 1951) is an American photographer and conservationist, best known for color images of wildlife, landscapes and native cultures. His photographs document scenes from every continent and hundreds of locations, and have been noted by environmental advocacy groups for their stunning visual impact. Wolfe's career has been described as multi-faceted, involving wildlife advocacy, art, journalism, and education. According to William Conway, former president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Wolfe is a "prolific and sensitive recorder of a rapidly vanishing natural world." In the last 30 years, the public has viewed Wolfe's work in more than sixty published books, including Vanishing Act, The High Himalaya, Water: Worlds between Heaven & Earth, Tribes, Rainforests of the World, and The Art of Photographing Nature.
W359pf
Woodland Pride, Montana Art Wolfe


Looking for ImperfectionGilberto Perez
Vol. 23 No. 16 · 23 August 2001
Looking for Imperfection
Gilberto Perez
John Cassavetes: Lifeworks
by Tom Charity.
Omnibus, 257 pp., £10.95, March 2001, 0 7119 7544 2Show More
Cassavetes on Cassavetes
edited by Ray Carney.
Faber, 526 pp., £17.99, March 2001, 0 571 20157 1Show More
‘I’m really against nudity in movies,’ Julia Roberts said a while ago. ‘When you act with your clothes on, it’s a performance. When you act with your clothes off, it’s a documentary. I don’t do documentaries.’ Quoting this bit of wit and wisdom in a recent New Yorker piece on Roberts, Anthony Lane wrote: ‘it shows … how remote she is from any European visions of cinema – not just from the relaxed, Old World attitude toward sex but from the European assumption (found lingering in the work of Americans like Robert Altman) that the scent of documentary can and should be allowed to flavour a fictional method.’ Lane is thinking of American cinema as Hollywood. But there is a strong tradition of American documentary, from Robert Flaherty to cinéma vérité (which despite its name was American before it was French) to Errol Morris. And as for allowing into fiction the scent of documentary, no fictional method has more of a documentary flavour than the way of making movies devised by John Cassavetes. His movies have been more admired in Europe, it is true; they are nonetheless distinctly American.
The connection between stripping and documentary made by Julia Roberts can be extended. If performance puts on a mask, documentary could be said to reveal, to unmask, to strip bare. Cassavetes was preoccupied from the beginning with masks and unmasking, performance and seeing through performance, in life as in art. When he was running the theatrical workshop in New York where he found the actors and developed the ideas for his first movie, Shadows (1957-59), he told an interviewer that most experiences in life are as ‘staged’ and ‘artificial’ as most dramatic performances, and that the problem ‘for modern man’ is ‘breaking free from conventions and learning how to really feel again’. I’m quoting from Cassavetes on Cassavetes, edited by Ray Carney, who sees this as ‘a daring leap: lived experience could be as much a product of convention as dramatic experience, and in fact the one sort of convention could be the subject of the other. It was the first and most succinct statement of the subject of Shadows and all of Cassavetes’s later work.’ It wasn’t so much that Cassavetes’s words were daring: what they showed was a man of his time, anxiously calling for freedom from convention and for the expression of real feeling – just as the Abstract Expressionists and the Beats were doing. They also announced his lifelong concern with the masks of dramatic and social convention and with revealing the faces hiding behind them. Shadows is about love, race, and identity among the bohemian young in New York. A decade later in Faces (1968), which after a Hollywood hiatus was his next independent production, the characters and setting have changed – the focus is on a marriage falling apart among the affluent middle-aged in Southern California – but the preoccupations remain the same. Cassavetes said that Faces could be summed up in the words: ‘Masks and faces’. His movies don’t strip actors of their clothes so much as their masks, exposing their naked faces to documentary scrutiny.
‘The film you have just seen was an improvisation,’ we read on the screen at the end of Shadows. But this is not true – or not of the film we have just seen. It was truer of the first version of Shadows, which had three midnight screenings in New York late in 1958 and caught the eye of Jonas Mekas, a central figure in American avant-garde cinema, whose enthusiasm for the film led to its receiving the first Independent Film Award from his magazine Film Culture. ‘More than any other recent American film,’ Mekas wrote in his citation, it ‘presents contemporary reality in a fresh and unconventional manner … The improvisation, spontaneity and free inspiration that are almost entirely lost in most films from an excess of professionalism are fully used in this film.’ Cassavetes must have found Mekas’s talk of ‘spontaneous cinema’ congenial, but he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of belonging to an avant-garde. He didn’t want to turn his back on the larger audience he had already reached as an actor. Despite the award, he wasn’t satisfied with that first Shadows, which he saw as ‘a totally intellectual film – and therefore less than human. I had fallen in love with the camera, with technique, with beautiful shots, with experimentation for its own sake … It had a nice rhythm to it, but it had absolutely nothing to do with people. Whereas you have to create interest in your characters because this is what audiences go to see.’ He recalled the actors and reshot much of the movie, this time following a script: a script inspired by the earlier improvisations, a script meant to sound spontaneous, but all the same a prepared script, with lines written by Cassavetes for the actors to speak. And, despite a low budget, this reshooting involved many retakes – more than 18 hours of footage as Cassavetes looked for what he wanted. The first Shadows ran for an hour, and less than half of that was kept in the revised version, which runs for an hour and a half. As Tom Charity remarks in his critical biography of Cassavetes, ‘Mekas’s “spontaneous cinema” had no sooner been recognised than it was reconsidered.’
For Faces, which runs a little over two hours, Cassavetes shot around 150 hours of film. That’s an exceedingly high shooting ratio. And for his next film, Husbands (1970), which runs just a bit longer, he shot almost twice that, a ratio higher than 100 to 1. More usual in documentary than in fiction, a high ratio of shot footage to edited film became part of Cassavetes’s fictional method. In documentary a high shooting ratio has to do with the problem of what to include. In fiction, where things are not gathered from life but staged for the camera, it usually means a desire to get the staging just right. Another actor turned director, Charlie Chaplin, also shot a lot of footage for his films, doing scenes over and over again in search of perfection. But Cassavetes seems to have been looking for imperfection. That, according to Carney, was his ‘stunning originality’: ‘He pioneered a new form of art – an art liberated from unearthly ideals of beauty, heroism, purity or virtue. He was the poet of imperfection.’ Carney makes the point that Cassavetes exhibited in his life, in relation both to himself and to those around him, the same non-judgmental acceptance of ‘moral and emotional untidiness’ found in his ‘radically unidealised’ works. ‘The process of making the films was of a piece with the world depicted in the films,’ Carney writes. ‘Cassavetes and his characters equally were given the task of making something of an imperfect world populated with imperfect figures.’
The notion that a work representing untidiness should itself be untidy, that art should be messy because life is messy, comes under the heading of the fallacy of expressive form. But a fallacy of that kind depends on the assumption that art has to keep a distance from life – an aesthetic distance – and Cassavetes’s films are not alone among modern works of art in rejecting aesthetic distance and aiming to break down the boundaries between art and life. The first Shadows, which no longer exists, seemed to William Pechter ‘closer at times to being that elusive entity, a true slice of life, than almost anything else I can think of which claims the name. There is, in effect, no beginning or end to the film – just middle.’ But Pechter found that ‘this quality was increasingly lost in subsequent versions,’ and the Shadows we can see today, though still a rambling film without beginning or end, couldn’t be described as a slice of life. Rather, it is a slice of acting, often bad acting. Its imperfections, which are many, belong not to real life but to acted and filmed performance. The performance may be taken to represent life, but, here as in Cassavetes’s subsequent films, it is closer to a kind of allegory, a symbolic transposition of life into the realm of actors acting, than to a lifelike representation. Rather than there being any imitation of reality, in these films the actors acting are themselves the reality. It’s not so much that the world is a stage as that Cassavetes knows only the staged world.
Once in a television talk show, when ‘the interviewer asked him about the difference between movie-acting and stage-acting,’ as Dave Hickey reports the occasion, Robert Mitchum
said the difference was that the audience watching a movie believes what they’re seeing is real. ‘Not the story,’ he said, waving his hand, ‘but the setting and the props, the mise en scène … If I’m on location, shooting a scene where I’m leaning against a tree, the tree is real; the sky behind it is the real sky; the ground I’m standing on is real dirt … Everything is real, in other words, except me, my character. That’s fake … So you have to use the audience’s belief in the setting and the props to make the character real … On stage, it’s just the reverse. The setting and props are fake.’
On stage, Mitchum is saying, it’s the actors that bring reality to the fiction, whereas in a movie it’s the mise en scène, the documentary detail, that makes up the world in which the fiction is seen to take place. So for Mitchum, that very American actor, the scent of documentary is essential to the fictional method of the movies. Cassavetes’s movies have a different documentary scent and a different fictional method, closer in some respects to the method of the stage. These movies are lacking in the realism of setting and props that seems native to the medium. They are pretty thin in their rendering of detail and milieu but quite thick with the reality of actors acting. Here, as on the stage, it’s the actors who are expected to bring reality to these fictions. But on the stage the actors are actually there in front of the audience. What we have before us in these movies is a peculiar documentary of performance.
One of Cassavetes’s European admirers, Jean-Luc Godard, has said that every film is a documentary of its actors. That may be true – besides playing a part in a fiction, the actor is a real person before the camera’s documentary eye – but it is not true of every film in the same way. The non-professional recruited from the street in the manner of Italian Neo-Realism is not the same as the movie star, though in both cases the actor’s personal traits as rendered by the camera inform the image on the screen. In his own films Godard distances the documentary of the actor from the performance of a character, the real person from the fictional impersonation. This is a kind of alienation effect: Godard can be seen as a Brechtian film-maker. Cassavetes was of the opposite persuasion, the school of Stanislavsky: he believed in as close an identification as possible between the actor and the character. Although he never attended the Actors Studio, he imbibed the same theatrical culture in his formative years. It’s not a mistake but a sign of deep-seated conviction that, as Carney notes, Cassavetes tends to talk about his actors as his characters and his characters as his actors. So close is his identification of actor and character that he identifies performance with character – performance not as the mimic but as the maker of character, character not as the referent but as the product of performance. The documentary of the actor in Cassavetes’s films doesn’t only have to do with the actor’s person, passively there for the camera to observe; it isn’t merely a matter of the actor’s traits entering into the portrayal of a character: it’s a matter of the actor’s acting, of keeping track of the activity through which character is seen to come into being, of watching what the actor does as it gives rise to what the character is. The focus is on the often tortuous process of performance. One reason I go to the movies more often than to the theatre is that the imperfections of performance, when I see them on the stage in front of me, make me feel embarrassed on the actors’ behalf. I had thought this was because the actors are right there at the theatre. But in his movies, with his documentary of performance, Cassavetes succeeds in making me feel the same kind of embarrassment for the actors, even though they’re not there.
In Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), his attempt at a screwball comedy with Gena Rowlands (his wife) and Seymour Cassel as the leads, Cassavetes shows little gift for the kind of playful, extemporising rapport between actors that animates such classics of the genre as It Happened One Night (Frank Capra was Cassavetes’s favourite director) or The Awful Truth or Bringing Up Baby. Part of the fun of those movies comes from the sense they give that the actors themselves are having fun. An actor having fun with a part, playfully embroidering it, opens up a certain distance between actor and character that goes against the kind of identification sought by Cassavetes. The acting in his movies usually looks like hard work. When he allows his actors to relax, however, the moments of fun can be memorable: Lelia Goldoni being flirtatious in Shadows; Lynn Carlin laughing in Faces; the ending of A Woman under the Influence (1974), where at the last minute the tone lightens and a heavy melodrama is brought to a surprisingly satisfying comic conclusion; much of the strange Love Streams (1984), his last film, with himself and Gena Rowlands as the leads, and maybe his best. But the male horseplay, the back-slapping, hard-drinking, whore-hugging male bonding, of which there is plenty in Shadows and Faces and especially in Husbands, is not much fun, which may perhaps be the point – that these men are incapable of being at ease with themselves and one another – but the strenuous non-fun goes on and on and gets to be quite tiresome for the viewer if not for the actors/ characters. It seems that Cassavetes in real life was much like the character he plays in Husbands alongside Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara; the three men, who didn’t know one another very well before the filming, became buddies just like their characters in the film. Husbands may be taken as an auto-critique; it is also a self-indulgence.
Ray Carney has been the keeper of the Cassavetes flame in the American academy. He thinks Cassavetes is the greatest and sees himself as the only one saying it. So he shouts it, he grabs you by the lapels and insists that you hear it. He habitually overstates his case, and you back away even where you might agree. It may be fair to say that Mabel, the mad housewife in A Woman under the Influence, represents a reach for freedom, an individual spontaneity knocking up against the society around it; but it’s stretching it to say, as Carney does in American Dreaming, that Mabel ‘is a visionary and a dreamer in the Emersonian tradition, a heroine with a freedom of consciousness and a richness of imagination that Henry James would have appreciated’, and that ‘the astonishing thing Cassavetes does with this Emersonian, this Jamesian figure is to thrust her into the centre of a world of pressures, influences and circumscriptions as relentless and inescapable as anything Theodore Dreiser or Edith Wharton might have imagined.’ Henry James would have had no time for a character like Mabel; and Cassavetes gives us nothing like the picture of a society that we find in Dreiser or Wharton. Carney comes from a training in American studies, a field founded on the Emersonian tradition Mabel is said to embody. In American Dreaming, published in the mid-1980s, and in a second full-blown study of Cassavetes he produced a decade later, he approaches the film-maker and his characters in terms of the conflict between self and society, between the Emersonian dream of individual freedom and the pressures and demands of social life. The approach would be more fruitful if Carney did not keep making such large claims for Cassavetes, invoking the great names in the American tradition, drawing slanted comparisons with other film-makers in which Cassavetes always comes out top, and paid more attention to specifics, both the specifics of his film-making and those of the self and society. In Cassavetes on Cassavetes he has usefully put together what he calls ‘the autobiography John Cassavetes never lived to write’. This is not simply a collection of interviews with the film-maker but a coherent chronological narrative of his life and career, arranged by Carney, with extensive commentary by him, out of things Cassavetes said on different occasions, stories he related at different times over the years. The commentary might have been briefer; there should have been an index, and footnotes for those who want to know when and where the things were said. But anybody interested in Cassavetes will be grateful.
Tom Charity’s critical biography is the first book on Cassavetes in English that isn’t by Carney. Charity is as much of a fan but he wears his fandom more lightly; unencumbered by the self v. society dichotomies of American studies, he gives a clearer account of the film-maker’s working methods. There are tributes and appreciations from several fellow film-makers, including Jim Jarmusch (‘Your films are about love’), John Sayles (‘Watching a Cassavetes movie was never a safe place to be’), Gary Oldman (‘At first I thought it might be a 1960s documentary – the people were that real. The film was Faces’), Pedro Almodóvar, Peter Bogdanovich and Olivier Assayas.
‘He thinks not like a director but like an actor,’ Pauline Kael wrote, and the remark was not intended as praise. But Kael was aware that what can be said against Cassavetes can also be said for him:
Cassavetes’s method is peculiar in that its triumphs and its failures are not merely inseparable from the method but often truly hard to separate from each other. The acting that is so bad it’s embarrassing sometimes seems also to have revealed something, so we’re forced to reconsider our notions of good and bad acting.
Cassavetes thought like an actor who resented the rule of the director. As a writer he didn’t provide stage directions for the actors, and he didn’t think the director should provide them either. It wasn’t the lines that were improvised in his films: it was the stage directions. He wanted the actors to be the characters, and it was the actors’ characters he wanted, not the writer’s or the director’s. He would give the actors their lines and talk to them about their parts, but he still wouldn’t tell them what to do. He would tell them when he didn’t like what they did, he would have them do it again, but he wouldn’t tell them what to do. He wanted them to play their parts in their own way and allowed them wide latitude of movement and expression. One might say he didn’t direct them; one might say he did away with the director. His actors didn’t play to the camera as movie actors are usually made to do: instead, they played to one another and the camera followed them, without knowing ahead of time where they would go, able to respond to their gestures and their movements, but not to anticipate them, rather like a documentary camera capturing life as it happens. Of course there would be many retakes: life would be made to repeat over and over again until something happened. But Cassavetes didn’t know ahead of time what he was after: the actors had to perform it before he could recognise it. Rather like a documentary film-maker, he was out to discover something in performance. ‘I want you to be patient with me,’ Gena Rowlands says to the driver as she gets into a cab in Love Streams, ‘because I don’t know exactly where I’m going yet.’
Clothes as well as masks come off in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976; recut and re-released in 1978), whose protagonist Cosmo (Ben Gazzara) runs a strip joint in LA with connections to the Mob. A Woman under the Influence had been an unexpected box-office success, and now Cassavetes hoped to keep that up with a movie in the popular gangster genre, but he was badly disappointed. This gangster movie looks as if it was shot by a documentary camera that was only able to capture snatches of the plot. Cassavetes spoke of it as a less personal project, but Carney is right to see it as a portrait of the artist. Cosmo is a figure of the director; he takes pride in the shows he puts on at the Crazy Horse West. On that stage he’s not performer, he’s director behind the scenes. In his daily life, however, he performs with a mask of cool style, an affectation of class, which we have to admit he maintains with a self-possession not easily shaken, even though we see through it. But this performance has another director behind the scenes, the Mob, which treats him as a puppet and makes him enact a script in which it allows him no say. It’s a role he cannot refuse, but Cosmo manages to play it his way, to become his own director, which enables him finally to wear with real feeling the mask of grace under pressure. The stripping of a mask leads to the wearing of another, or in Cosmo’s case to his wearing much the same mask made his own. It’s for the sake of his performance that he becomes his own director; it’s not as director but as performer that Cosmo commands admiration.
The most peculiar thing about Cassavetes’s method – and a striking departure from the Method of the Actors Studio – is that he would discuss their parts with his actors one on one but not together, not as a group or even a pair. It’s part of the director’s job to have the actors work as an ensemble, and it was part of Cassavetes’s abdication of the director’s job that he would leave them on their own. He wanted them to work as individuals, to come into the scene without knowing what the others might do. This, it could be said, is the individualism of the Emersonian tradition – except that Cassavetes has no time for the dream of individual transcendence and always puts his actors, his characters, in a social situation, in give and take with others. In real life, it seems, he was the type who likes to have people around him all the time, and the same is true of his characters. If character, for him, is defined in performance, the performance is always a transaction with others. If in Cassavetes performance, the staged world of actors acting, is an allegory for life, the allegory is of atomised individuals thrown together, with little idea of what others are about and yet forced to come to terms with their pressures and demands. It’s an apt allegory for American life.
Cassavetes died at 59 of cirrhosis of the liver. He had been diagnosed with the disease a few years earlier, at the time he began filming Love Streams, and given six months to live; he quit drinking for a while but soon started again. It’s curious that Charity tries to deny or at least to qualify the fact that Cassavetes was an alcoholic.
Gilberto Perez, Noble Professor of Art and Cultural History at Sarah Lawrence College, is the author of The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium.
How We Remember: Terrence Malick
Bourgeois Nightmares: Michael Haneke
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More by Gilberto Perez


Dennis L. Murray, MD, FAAP
Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society
Dr. Murray is a fellow of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), as well as many other professional medical societies.
He is a professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Section of Infectious Disease at the Medical College of Georgia Children’s Medical Center. Dr. Murray has received several teaching honors and served on many medical committees, including the PIDS and Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Public Policy Committees. Dr. Murray has participated in developing many publications for the American Academy of Pediatrics, including the 1997, 2000 and 2003 editions of the Red Book: Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases. He also conducts clinical research in the areas of public awareness of vaccines and vaccine safety.
Dr. Murray received a B.S. in Zoology and his medical degree from the University of Michigan.
NNii Staff


Stephen King evokes John Wick and pandemic anxiety in the tense, fractured Billy Summers
The first half of King’s new crime novel is some of his best work in years. The second half is a different story.
Cover image: Scribner
Graphic: Natalie Peeples
The final page of Billy Summers—Stephen King’s latest effort to master pulp crime fiction just as he tamed horror several decades ago—includes, like many of King’s books, a note saying when he wrote it. In most of King’s novels, this addendum serves as little more than a cheery footnote, a reminder of the hard work and the sheer amount of time that must be poured into the author’s brick-heavy tomes to bring them to life. But in Billy Summers, those dates arrive with a meaning that no one could have anticipated when King first sat down to craft his story of a hitman with a heart of gold: June 12, 2019 - July 3, 2020.
To be clear, Billy Summers is not a pandemic novel, at least not in the traditional sense. Outside of a few allusions to the COVID-19 lockdowns, King resists the urge to import details directly from a reality that has sometimes felt cribbed from the pages of his most famous works. But the steadily growing cabin fever is nevertheless inescapable as one dives deeper into the book, and a first act of stunning formal control gives way to a second half that is frequently unfocused, lurid, and, at times, clichéd. All of which builds to a climax that seems to pull from the darkest recesses of home-brewed Twitter and cable news paranoia; it’s wish fulfillment for those living in a world where the rich and powerful orchestrate acts of monstrous evil, while we’re all stuck at home, brokenly clicking along. The action then settles, almost miraculously, into an epilogue that brings the book’s best qualities back to the forefront.
But first: That opening half, which sees its title contract killer shacking up in a nondescript Midwestern city, waiting several months for his next target to be delivered to a nearby courthouse. In the meantime, the Iraq vet-turned-freelance-sniper must blend in with the locals, a setup King uses to get the wheels spinning on a delicious engine of tension. By the time the date of the hit arrives, our uber-competent undercover anti-hero is running something like five different identities in an effort to keep everyone—his neighbors, his employees, himself—in the dark about what’s actually going on. The most prominent of these is also the one that tips the book into more recognizable King territory, as Billy’s employers (having bought into his persona as a slow-witted murder-savant) mockingly set him up as a first-time novelist to explain his extended stay in town.
If Billy Summers has a thesis—beyond the burbling morass of vengeance fantasies that threaten to transform the second half into something akin to Stephen King’s Death Wish—it’s in the sequences that dive into Billy’s attempts to turn his cover gig into a real one and filter his life story into prose. King has written so many author-protagonists over the years that it’s tipped over from a running joke into simply being part of the background radiation of his oeuvre. But he’s rarely put this much time and energy into depicting the actual cathartic work of the job, up to and including drafting whole chapters of Billy’s writing as he processes his abusive childhood and military service to untangle the web of identities he’s crafted around himself. The rapture with which Billy realizes he can finally peek out from behind the masks and speak in his own voice (if only to himself) could have been corny in another book, but in King’s hands, it comes off as infectiously genuine. In addition to those loftier ideas, these excerpts are also a chance for King to engage in a bit of metafictional gamesmanship, crafting text that reads like the work of a gifted beginner, distinct from the more familiar tone used in the rest of the book.
At least in the early going, the bulk of Billy Summers is a delightfully tense crime thriller, tracking the protagonist’s efforts to pull “one last job”—the character, an aggressive consumer of literary fiction, notes the trope himself. Ostensibly light on incident, Billy’s preparations highlight King’s sharp skills for observation—sizing up the people in his orbit for how they might help or pose a danger to his schemes—and begin to unlock some of the traumas that drove him to kill for cash. The fact that those deep-seated motives seem to have been largely pulled from The Big Book Of Professional Murderers Who Are Also Good, Sensitive Guys, We Swear, can probably be chalked up as much to the genre as King’s actual plotting. The result, despite its surface familiarity (it’s wild how much of Billy’s story tracks with HBO’s Barry, for example, to say nothing of the outright John Wick reference that pops up), is somehow both hard-boiled and human, and on par with much of King’s best work.
All of this holds true until the halfway point, when, with the pull of a trigger, King jettisons huge swaths of the tension that made Billy Summers such a compulsive, memorable read. What replaces it is a sort of surreal vigilante road trip tale, shot through with sexual violence and revenge, which adds a seemingly unintentional queasy element to the book’s central relationships. The complicated layers of identity fall away, and what we’re left with verges on the simplicity of a morality play.
It would be reductive to assume that this portion of Billy Summers (which begins with Billy locking himself away for weeks at a time and even features him bingeing NBC’s The Blacklist) was written strictly post-outbreak, and the rest before. But as the singular focus of the first act morphs into a sprawling revenge thriller that sees King invent ever-more-awful (human) monsters for his hero to hunt, it’s hard not to feel like a sheer dividing line was crossed somewhere. Certainly, it’s strange that the portions of the book in which its hero fritters away his days playing Monopoly with local kids are far more compelling than those in which he roams the country, executing crime lords and rapists. Given King’s experimentation with serialization over the years, it’s hard not to wish that the two stories—and that is, ultimately, what this feels like—could have had more separation between them, if only so the second half didn’t suffer so much by comparison.
It’s the writing that saves Billy Summers—both the prose itself and the depiction of the act. Together, they give the book the lifeline it needs as its ripped-from-the-headlines ending looms. Even in the most hoary of crime scenarios, King can still build tidal waves of tension from the smallest deviation from plan, sending Constant Readers plunging deep into the flop-sweat insecurities of his heroes as they watch a situation potentially spiral out of control. In situating Billy’s atonement in communication and creation, not violence, King manages to find a space for redemption that might otherwise have rung hollow. For a book whose only supernatural element is the occasional looming ruin of the distant Overlook Hotel—where another King writer stand-in once fared far more poorly with his isolation and “gifts”—Billy Summers is winningly optimistic about the life of the creative mind. More than almost any other King book in recent memory, it’s a product of its time, but not a victim of it.
Author photo: Shane Leonard
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How Advanced Can 3D Printed Colors Be?
KERRY STEVENSON | June 20, 2019
DyeMansion is a German company specializing in post-processing 3D prints. They offer a complete set of equipment and software to perform the three most frequently performed post-processing activities for 3D prints, including: support removal, surface smoothing and coloration.
Sciaky, Inc.
Sciaky, Inc., a subsidiary of Phillips Service Industries, Inc. (PSI), is a leading provider of metal 3D printing / Additive Manufacturing (AM) solutions. We also provide state-of-the-art electron beam (EB) welding systems and advanced arc welding systems — along with extensive job shop EB welding services — to the aerospace, defense, automotive, medical and other manufacturing industries. Our state-of-the-art equipment meets rigid military specifications to manufacture items such as airframes, landing gear, jet engines, guided missiles and vehicle parts.
American Manufacturing Statistics
The transformation of raw materials through mechanical, physical, or chemical processes into a new product is the definition of manufacturing in the U.S. These businesses include plants, mills, factories, and warehouses and they rely on power-driven equipment to produce their products. Small businesses and home-based businesses are included in the scope of U.S. manufacturing - this includes sectors like tailor-made clothing, bakeries, candy stores, or toy/crafts creators. Additionally, companies that contract with the businesses in these industries are included in the sector of American manufacturing. It is worth noting: U.S. manufacturing does not include anything relating to housing or commercial construction. Read more...
Rex Moore Proves Project Business Automation Provides Predictive and Proactive Resource Requirements
Rex Moore Group, Inc. is a Top50 electrical contractor delivering unmatched integrated electrical solutions. As an early adopter of Lean manufacturing principles, Rex Moore has created a company-wide culture of continuous improvement that drives significant value to their clients. The firm contracts and performs both design/build and bid work for all electrical, telecommunications, and integrated systems market segments. Rex Moore has a full-service maintenance department to cover emergency and routine requirements for all facilities, whether an existing facility or one that has been recently completed by the company. The ability to negotiate and competitively bid various forms of contracts including lump-sum, fixed fee, hourly rate, and cost-plus work as a prime contractor, subcontractor, or joint venture is enhanced with Project Business Automation (PBA) from Adeaca. This solution permits the company to propose work only if they are in a position to be competitive in the marketplace and provide excellent service with fair compensation. Rex Moore used Adeaca PBA as a construction management software for builders and contractors to integrate and facilitate its business processes in its ERP system. Together with Microsoft Dynamics, PBA integrated processes across the company on a single end-to-end platform. This allowed the company to replace 15 different applications with a single comprehensive system, eliminating the costs and inefficiencies associated with multiple systems and silos of information.
Reshoring and Technology Platforms Transforming Hiring Practices in the Manufacturing Sector
Article | March 31, 2021
Everyday the supply chain is jeopardized. A freighter stuck in the Suez Canal has severe ripple effects in raw material goods making their way around the world. Trade tariffs and unpredictable consequences from COVID have encouraged many US manufacturers to reshore bringing jobs stateside. This strategy will shift the supply chain challenge to a staffing challenge. As the manufacturing industry is poised for rapid growth over the next 24 months, hiring the best workers once again becomes the top challenge. As the workforce is vaccinated and reshoring the supply chain becomes a clarion call for industry, finding the right people with the right skills forces plant managers, operations managers, and HR managers to find new and innovative recruiting strategies. FactoryFix is an online platform that matches vetted manufacturing workers with companies seeking specific skill sets. This platform sets a new standard in how small to mid-sized manufacturers hire talent across the U.S.
Filmmaking is Manufacturing
Filmmaking is manufacturing. To date, no one has made the direct correlation between the two. As many entertainment professionals know, the budget gap between indie productions and big studio blockbusters continues to grow. The day of mid-budget, independent (indie) movies is disappearing as fast as the middle class in the American economy. According to newbiefilmschool, the average budget is barely at $2 million for these pictures and producers have been forced to adapt by discovering creative ways to decrease costs, while maintaining a high production values for a sophisticated audience with high expectations. Though there are many ways to cut costs, any business professional will agree to go with the options that bring down the budget the most. Just as dog is man’s best friend, here are three reasons why manufacturers have become the same for a filmmaker by saving money and time for every type of production. Film equipment manufacturers No long may a film lack quality in picture, sound, and bad acting. Once acceptable, these older movies were produced with the technology and film equipment constraints and from limited funding. Film equipment manufacturers from cameras, sound equipment, and computers cost less to achieve high production values. Film equipment companies face increasing competition, which has driven down the purchase price. Better equipment with significant technology improvements has reframed the indie film industry with high-level sound and image capture quality. The transition of cameras from film to digital was a notable shift for manufacturers. Many industry-insiders believe that digital is free, and film is expensive, but there is more the manufacturing construct. Digital cameras, when compared to film cameras in the same market price bracket, are much more expensive than analog counterparts. It is true that film costs money and is single-use. Digital memory cards are relatively expensive and can be reused. Film also needs to be developed and there is a cost associated with that production cost. There are other ways in which digital modalities save filmmakers. Automation Across all industries, efficiency always wins. Innovative manufacturers have developed machines to make numerous jobs easier for everyone. Machines have been assisting filmmakers since the invention of the camera. AI (artificial intelligence) is poised to change film even more and continues to augment human creativity. Storytellers work with computers during every process of creating a motion picture which has sped up the time it takes to complete each-step in film making. Automating pre-production processes, such as creating a budget and writing a script, is analogous to an ERP (enterprise resource planning) software for a traditional manufacturing operation. The Movie Magic budgeting software by Entertainment Partners has made creating a budget more efficient and accurate. Screenwriter programs vary from the downloadable Final Draft, and the purely cloud based, Celtx, are the reasons automated scriptwriting is the norm. These programs also automatically format writing to industry standards, facilitating the creative process. Automation in post-production is equally advanced through editing software for video, sound, effects, and colors all the way to distribution and promotional content. Editing footage from digital rather than film saves time and money. Industry favorites include Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple’s exclusive Final Cut Pro and are used on almost all well-known movies and TV shows. The impacts of COVID-19 on entertainment manufacturers Without question, the pandemic has affected every industry by creating an unanticipated production standstill. Entertainment manufacturers have sacrificed countless productions, lost billions of dollars, and major talent agencies have furloughed hundreds of employees. This negative impact is not just difficult for indie filmmakers, big studios are suffering just as much with production delays and cancellations still happening as this article goes to press. Any way back to the set is better than no set at all. A new necessity for productions to safely reopen includes epidemiologists and other public health specialists; they provide detailed strategies dealing with large crews who work in cramped spaces, makeup artists who get face-to-face with actors who kiss, hug, and fight on set. These COVID-19 consultants rely on the manufacturing industry for PPE supplies and carry out regular PCR tests. Face coverings and hand sanitizing stations have also become the norm, just like most other manufacturing operations.
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Testing the Factuality of the Conquest of Ai Narrative in the Book of Joshua: Part Three
Author: Peter Briggs
Category: Khirbet el-Maqatir Research Articles
The problem addressed in this article is the arbitration among the three alternative views of the conquest of Ai narrative summarized in Part One. This is accomplished by testing the correspondence between the narrative in question and the material time-space context it purports to represent. Part Three...
This is Part Three of a four-part article.
THE BIBLICAL TIMELINE
Material facts of all kinds, including artifacts from an archaeological locus, are devoid of inherent meaning and therefore indeterminate or not self-determinative. Meaning is ascribed to them solely by a narrative representation of a determinative kind [Oller (1996: 216); Oller & Collins (2000); Collins & Oller (2000)]. Thus, archaeological research should always operate within the framework of a determinative narrative; in other words, a TNR. In the case of archaeological research of the Bronze Age Canaanite cultures in Palestine, and because of the paucity of epigraphic or historiographic material unearthed from these cultures, the Bible assumes the role of the primary source of historical data. There simply is no other source of comparable scope, coherence, and integrity.
The Contribution of the Biblical Timeline to the Criterial Screen
A necessary component of the criterial screen is the establishment of the temporal location of the conquest of Ai according to the biblical narrative. The conquest of Ai, as recorded in chapters 7 and 8 of Joshua, would have occurred near the beginning of the Conquest, the chronology of which is determined in relationship to the date of the Exodus. As discussed in Briggs (2007: 64-72 & 83-85), the selection of the date for the Exodus is the object of intense debate, much of which is precipitated by archaeological findings. However, for determining the temporal location of the conquest of Ai we must insist on allowing the Bible to speak for itself and prevent the confounding of biblical data by archaeological data. This is true because the parameters of the criterial screen must be in strict accord with the biblical text.
Biblical Date for the Exodus
The three principal passages that provide a basis for deriving a biblical date for the Exodus are as follows: (a) 1 Kings 6:1; (b) the letter from Jephthah to the king of Ammon summarized in Judges 11:26; and, (c) the genealogy of Heman in 1 Chronicles 6:33-43. These three passages consistently point to an Exodus date in the range of 1470-1406 BC – that is, in the 15th century BC and within the time frame of the 18th dynasty of Egypt. The chronological data dispersed throughout the books of Judges and 1 & 2 Samuel is a fourth source, but is not weighted significantly. A fifth source for deriving the biblical date for the Exodus is based upon the correspondence between the historical narrative in the Book of Exodus and Egyptian history; in particular, the history of the 18th dynasty. The key events in Exodus which must be reflected in the history of the 18th dynasty are as follows: (a) the Pharaoh of the Oppression died during Moses’ sojourn in Midian according to Exodus 7:6; (b) the firstborn son of the Pharaoh of the Exodus – presumably the heir to the throne – died as a consequence of the tenth plague; (c) the Pharaoh of the Exodus himself died with his entire army when he pursued Israel through the Sea of Reeds according to Exodus 14:6-28, Psalm 106:9-12, and Psalm 136:15; and, (d) the ten plagues combined with the Sea of Reeds episode severely impacted lower Egypt economically and militarily. Steven Collins has carefully analyzed the historical synchronisms between the account in the Book of Exodus vis-a-vis the profiles of the pharaohs of the 18th and 19th dynasties in Egypt [Collins (2002)]. He demonstrates the substantial correlation that exists if Tuthmosis IV is identified as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Collins’ historical synchronisms analysis is sufficiently compelling that I embrace 1406 BC as the biblical date for the Exodus, which corresponds to the end of the reign of Tuthmosis IV. This date agrees very well with the date derived from the Septuagint rendering of 1 Kings 6:1 – to wit, the Exodus occurred 440 years prior to the 4th year of Solomon’s reign.
Timeline of the Wilderness Journey
According to Numbers 33:3, the Israelites set forth from Egypt on the 15th day of the 1st month, which would have been the morning after the first Passover celebration. According to Exodus 19:1, the Israelites arrived at the base of Mt. Sinai on the 15th day of the 3rd month, which would have been exactly 2 months after leaving Egypt. From Exodus 40:17, they received the law and directions for constructing the tabernacle through Moses, and they completed the construction of the tabernacle by the end of the 1st year. According to Exodus 40:17, the tabernacle was actually erected in the 1st month of the 2nd year. From Numbers 10:11, the tribes of Israel broke camp and departed from Mt. Sinai exactly 13 months and 5 days after their departure from Egypt. Based upon available chronological data in the Book of Numbers, the date of the Israelites’ arrival at Kadesh Barnea is placed in the 15th month after their departure from Egypt. The estimate of 2 months for the duration of their trip from Mt. Sinai to Kadesh Barnea is partially based on the fact that, according to Numbers 11:20ff, the people received the miraculous visitation of quail to satisfy their hunger for meat over a period of 1 month.
The Kadesh Barnea Episode
The Kadesh Barnea episode is recorded in the 13th and 14th chapters of Numbers. While encamped at Kadesh Barnea, Moses dispatched the twelve spies to survey the land, the spies returned with their report, and the people responded to the report by refusing to trust the promise of Yahweh that he would give them victory over the tribes of the Canaanites. The apostasy of the people at Kadesh Barnea precipitated the period of wilderness wanderings, which, according to Deuteronomy 2:14, consumed 38 years. By the end of the 38 years, the entire generation which had experienced the Exodus from Egypt had died except for two men; namely, Caleb and Joshua. Chronologically, the key event in the Kadesh Barnea episode is the promise given to Caleb, which is stated in Numbers 14:24. According to this promise, he would survive the 38 years of wandering in the wilderness and would enter the land of Canaan. Allowing 2 months for completion of the spies’ reconnoitering mission, the timing of the promise to Caleb is placed in the 17th month after the Exodus.
Timeline of the Wilderness Wanderings
From Exodus 7:7, Moses was 80 years old at the time of the Exodus, and from Deuteronomy 34:7, he was 120 years old when he died while the Israelites were encamped on the plains of Moab opposite Jericho.
Another data point is derived from Exodus 16:35, where the period of the people’s dependence on manna is stated to be 40 years. According to Joshua 5:10-11, the Israelites observed Passover after having crossed the Jordan and just prior to the attack on Jericho. This Passover was precisely 40 years after the one observed the evening before the Exodus. According to Joshua 5:12, the daily provision of manna ceased at the same time. Thus, the period of time from the Exodus until the people were encamped at Gilgal nearby Jericho and ready to initiate the Conquest is determined to be precisely 40 years. Accordingly, the date I embrace for the beginning of the Conquest is 1366 BC, which lies in the first half of the LB IIA archaeological period according to Table 1.
Timeline of the Conquest
In Joshua 14:10, Caleb states that 45 years had elapsed from the time of Yahweh’s promise to him at Kadesh Barnea to the conclusion of the Conquest. Based on the estimate above that the promise to Caleb was delivered in the 17th month after the Exodus, the end of the Conquest would have occurred approximately 46½ years after the Exodus. Therefore, the duration of the Conquest was 6½ years. To be precise, the Conquest was initiated in the spring of 1366 BC, and it was completed in the fall of 1360 BC. Accordingly, the entire Conquest occurred in the first half of the LB IIA archaeological period. However, because of a 30-year bias in the ceramic dating uncertainty combined with the fact that the fortress of Ai was a small and remote military outpost, a destruction that actually occurred in the first half of LB IIA would appear archaeologically to have occurred toward the end of LB I. 9
Implications of the Biblical Timeline
In accordance with our analytical method for deriving the criterial screen for the conquest of Ai narrative, the biblical timeline is postulated to be true from the Exodus until the beginning of the Conquest. This establishes the archaeological context for the conquest of Ai narrative as lying near the end of the LB I according to the reasoning process summarized above. The conquest of Ai narrative is then subjected to a detailed analysis based upon the TNR formalism, and, in particular, upon empirical correspondence as manifested in the criterial screen. If it turns out that all of the criterial screen parameters are satisfied, then the narrative is determined to be factual. As a byproduct of this determination, the biblical timeline would be confirmed. We could then move forward or backward along the biblical timeline to consider other narratives where a similar analytical approach could be applied. On the other hand, if the conquest of Ai narrative should be confirmed as nonfactual, then at least that portion of the Bible should be regarded as either a remarkable, erroneous conception or worse: a deliberately and maliciously fabricated myth which is tantamount to a lie. Furthermore, the credibility of other portions of the Bible that rely upon the conquest of Ai narrative would be called into serious question.
DERIVATION OF THE CRITERIAL SCREEN
The criterial screen derived from exegesis of the conquest of Ai narrative is the tool for evaluating the empirical correspondence between the narrative and the material time-space context it purports to describe. In fact, the criterial screen is the desired end-product of the exegesis of the text. Table 3 defines each parameter of the criterial screen, including a symbolic definition of the associated probability and the principal passage in the text from which it is derived. The following paragraphs summarize the derivation of each of the fourteen criterial screen parameters from the biblical text.10
Predicate Criterial Screen
The first three parameters of the criterial screen in Table 3 form a predicate criterial screen. These particular parameters constitute the minimum set that is capable of discriminating between viable and nonviable sites for Joshua’s Ai. Even though the predicate screen consists of only three parameters, it is sufficiently explicit that only one of the three candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai survive its application. That single site is then subjected to the still more demanding requirements of the remaining eleven parameters of the criterial screen.
Explanation of the Criterial Screen
The following paragraphs describe the derivation of each of the parameters of the criterial screen listed in Table 3.
Site located in the Benjamin hill country and destroyed in the first half of LB IIA. This first parameter is of primary importance, for it culls out from further consideration all candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai that are not properly located in space and time according to the biblical text. Spatially, Joshua’s Ai was situated in the Benjamin hill country of Israel. (Refer to Figure 1 in Part Two for a more precise definition of the portion of the Benjamin hill country indicated by the biblical text and the results of past research.) Temporally, Joshua’s Ai was occupied during LB I and destroyed in the first half of LB IIA. On account of the 30-year bias in ceramic dating uncertainty and the fact that Joshua’s Ai was a small and remote military outpost, a destruction in the first half of LB IIA would appear archaeologically as having occurred toward the end of the previous period, LB I.
Table 3. Criterial Screen for the Conquest of Ai Narrative
Small site with area less than 7 acres. According to Joshua 7:2-3, the fortress of Ai appeared to be so small that the spies recommended that only a contingent of 2E or 3E would be sufficient to take it. In accordance with Joshua 10:2, the area of Ai was smaller than that of Gibeon. Analysis of the area of Gibeon at the time of Joshua summarized above and detailed in Briggs (2007: 117-118) is based upon available data in Broshi & Gophna (1986: 82) and Finkelstein & Magen (1993) and yields the estimate of 11 ±4 acres; to wit, its area lay between a minimum value of 7 acres and a maximum value of 15 acres. Accordingly, I interpret the requirement that the area of the fortress of Ai be less than that of Gibeon to mean that the maximum value for the area of the fortress of Ai must be less than the minimum value for the area of Gibeon; namely, 7 acres.
Fortified site with wall and gate. There is no specific and direct biblical statement that Ai was fortified. However, a number of statements in the text of Joshua 7 and 8 present conclusive evidence that it was indeed fortified. In particular, the lines of evidence supporting fortification are as follows:
a. In Joshua 7:5, the flight of the Israelites after the first battle of Ai is described as having started from before or in front of the gate of the fortress. The existence of a gate implies that of a wall as well.
b. An unfortified location would not have a “front” face. The fact that Joshua 8:11 describes the residual attack force under Joshua’s command as “arriving in front of the city” is only reasonable if the Israelites acquired a position that was before or in face-to-face opposition to the principal wall face and gate of the fortress of Ai.
c. The divinely mandated ruse is not reasonable unless it was necessary for the Israelites to trick the Canaanites to leave the fortress open. If the site of Ai was unfortified, the overwhelming Israelite offensive force (5,730 versus a Canaanite defensive force estimated to be 750, or a 7.6-to-1 numerical advantage) could have entered it with impunity from any direction without employing a feigned retreat and ambush strategy.
The result of applying the predicate criterial screen. If S is the set of all sites in Israel, without regard to geographic location or period of occupation, then the parameters of the predicate criterial screen progressively narrow the set of candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai. As a result of completing the application of the first parameter, the set of potentially viable candidates is reduced to S1 , the sites in the Benjamin hill country that were occupied during LB I and destroyed in the first half of LB IIA. Application of the second parameter narrows the set of candidates further to S2 , those members of S1 that are smaller than 7 acres. Application of the third parameter narrows the set of candidates still further to S3 , those members of S2 that were fortified with wall and gate. In fact, as is demonstrated in the next section, S3 is populated by just one site. The function of the 4th through the 14th parameters of the criterial screen is to confirm the correct identification of that one site as Joshua’s Ai. For purposes of calculating a number of the probabilities P4 through P14 associated with the remaining 11 criterial screen parameters, the candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai are treated as a representative microcosm of the set of all fortified Benjamin hill country sites occupied during the time of Joshua.
Gate facing north to northeast. According to Joshua 8:11, the residual attack force “arrived in front of the city, and camped on the north side of Ai.” Thus, the principal gate of the fortress, or perhaps the only gate, was in the north or northeast face of the wall.
High ridge north of the fortress within 2 kilometers and intervening shallow valley within 1 kilometer. According to Joshua 8:11, most of the 22E residual attack force was encamped north of the fortress in a location which was hidden from the view of the men of Ai. Joshua 8:11 further states that there was an intervening valley between this camp and the fortress. Hence, the Israelite camp must have been located on a high ridge, probably forested, which lay north of Ai.11 Moreover, Joshua and his immediate subordinates would have required an elevated location close to the fortress of Ai from which to direct the battle. The value of 2 kilometers is set for the threshold of proximity of the high ridge relative to the fortress. Ridges that were more distant than this could not satisfy all of the biblical requirements. Furthermore, according to Joshua 8:13, Joshua made his camp and “spent the night in the midst of the valley,” probably taking with him a small detachment of men from the residual attack force. Thus, from Joshua 8:11-13, two separate but related aspects of the topography north of Ai are derived. First, there must have been a high ridge north of the fortress, and then there must have been an intervening valley where Joshua and his men spent the night. The fact that the valley in question was shallow is indicated by Joshua 8:14, which states that the king of Ai was able to observe all of Joshua’s movements and the place where he and his men set up camp. The value of 1 kilometer is set for the threshold of proximity of the valley relative to the fortress.
Ambush hiding place approximately southwest of the fortress within 3 kilometers. While the Canaanites were fixated on Joshua’s visual presentation of the detachment from the residual attack force on the north side of the fortress,12 it was essential that the 30E primary ambush force of Joshua 8:3-9 remain hidden from view. The topography surrounding the site of Ai had to be such that the primary ambush force could not be seen from either Ai or Bethel, the neighboring Canaanite city to the west. Based upon the combination of mildly contradictory directional indicators provided in the text (“behind” Ai, to the west of Ai, and “between” Ai and Bethel), it is concluded that the place of ambush was approximately southwest of the fortress.13 A proximity factor of 3 kilometers is selected because Joshua instructed the primary ambush force to acquire a position that was not far from the fortress according to Joshua 8:4.
Suitable location for the feigned retreat maneuver north or northeast of the fortress within 3 kilometers. According to Joshua 8:14ff, the Israelite force deployed frontally against the north-facing wall and gate of the fortress allowed itself to be driven back as in the first battle of Ai, and it feigned retreat toward an “appointed place before the desert plain;” that is, a location which commanded a view of the Jordan valley to the east.14 The location was such that once the men of Ai had been drawn into pursuit of the Israelites, they would have been prevented from quick return to their fortress, thus opening a significant window of opportunity for the primary ambush force to penetrate the fortress and set a fire. Accordingly, the topography to the north and northeast of Ai would have been characterized by an expanse suitable for maneuvering armies, a view of the Jordan valley, and a natural barrier obstructing the rapid return of the Canaanites to their unprotected fortress. A proximity factor of 3 kilometers is selected for this parameter since the location in question could not be so far to the east as to obscure Joshua’s raised weapon signal in accordance with Joshua 8:18.
Egress route with descent and shebarim within 3 kilometers. According to Joshua 7:5, in the first battle of Ai the Canaanites chased the fleeing Israelites as far as a specific location or landmark designated ‘the Shebârîym’, a term which is unique to this passage. Based upon available lexical data, this term denotes a prominent feature characterized by broken or jointed rock, quarrying, or possibly a ruin. To simplify nomenclature, the specific landmark spoken of in Joshua 7:5 is denoted ‘the Shebarim’ without diacritical marks, and candidate features observable in the region that may correspond to this specific one are denoted ‘shebarim’ or ‘shebarim formations’. According to Joshua 7:5, the features of a descent and the Shebarim were present along the egress route traversed by the Israelites in the first battle of Ai described in Joshua 7:4ff. Since these features characterized the route along which the men of Ai pursued the fleeing Israelites, they would necessarily have to exist within a short distance of Ai. A proximity factor of 3 kilometers is therefore selected. 15
Trafficable routes to location. According to Joshua 8:3, Joshua and the entire army of Israel left the camp at Gilgal near Jericho and marched to a staging encampment close to the fortress of Ai. According to Joshua 8:9, the 30E primary ambush force initiated a nighttime march toward their assigned place of ambush close to and southwest of the fortress. In fact, they probably completed their ingress under cover of darkness to minimize observability from actual or potential enemy positions. The next morning, according to Joshua 8:10-11, Joshua led the residual attack force along a different route to a point north of the fortress, a march that was completed in a single day. Thus, there needed to be a well-defined, trafficable route, such as an existing road or a wadi network, to support each of these three marches.16
Viable engagement scenarios. The battle strategy described in the conquest of Ai narrative must be viable with respect to the geographical and topographical context of the site of Joshua’s Ai as well as with respect to the military technology possessed by the Israelite army.17 The key elements of the strategy are the feigned retreat maneuver, Joshua’s raised weapon signal, the role of the secondary ambush force of Joshua 8:12, and the primary ambush force assault described in Joshua 8:14-17. While the biblical text is unusually detailed, certain aspects of the engagement are not specifically addressed. This can be overcome by formulating an engagement scenario model that effectively interpolates the missing detail between the data points supplied by the text. It is essential that the engagement scenario model be realizable in its topographical context, given times, distances, available lines-of-sight, degree of forestation, etc. In particular, there must have been a viable means for Joshua’s raised weapon signal to be relayed to the 30E primary ambush force, and the ambush force must have been able to quickly penetrate the unprotected fortress once the signal was delivered. A key aspect of the Israelite’s military technology was the fact that they were neither trained nor equipped for siege warfare. In other respects, their military technology and strategy would have been a derivative of that manifested in the campaign of Tuthmosis III against Megiddo, ca. 1479 BC.
Ceramic artifacts appropriate to a small highland fortress. Not only must the ceramic artifacts be diagnostic to LB I & IIA, but the kinds of wares represented must be appropriate to a small and remote military outpost, including large storage vessels and common wares for cooking and serving food. One would not expect to find exotic imported wares at the fortress of Ai. Moreover, the ceramic materials found at such an outpost would most likely be dominated by LB I materials. In particular, because of the durability of large storage jars, only vessels of this genre which are diagnostic to LB I would be expected at the site of Joshua’s Ai.
Object artifacts appropriate to a small highland fortress. In addition to the appropriate kinds of ceramic artifacts, one would expect to find objects that attest to a military location, such as gate post socket stones, sling stones, and possibly flint arrow and spear heads.
Convenient line-of-sight to Bethel. Since, according to Joshua 8:17, the fighting men of Bethel joined those of Ai in pursuing the Israelites, there must have been a means for the king of Ai to signal his counterpart at Bethel. The location of the fortress and the topography between it and Bethel would have allowed signal passing between the two locations.
Evidence of conflagration. According to Joshua 8:19, the 30E primary ambush force set a fire as soon as they had penetrated the fortress. Moreover, according to Joshua 8:2 & 28, the Israelites burned the entire fortress after they had removed “its spoil and its cattle,” making it a permanent heap of ruins. Therefore, evidence of a conflagration would be expected.
APPLICATION OF THE PREDICATE CRITERIAL SCREEN
Three candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai emerge from past research as follows: (a) the traditional site, et-Tell; (b) Kh. Nisya; and, (c) Kh. el-Maqatir. Depicted in Figure 1 is the portion of the Benjamin hill country of interest to this research (namely, the 16 square kilometer tract bounded by grid coordinate 144,000 on the south, 148,000 on the north, 171,000 on the west, and 175,000 on the east) and the location of the three candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai with respect to each other and the geographical and topographical features in the vicinity. 18 19 The predicate criterial screen consists of the first three parameters listed in Table 3, of which the first is of primary importance. These three parameters constitute the minimum set which suffices to cull out the non-viable candidates for Joshua’s Ai, leaving only a single, viable candidate.
Application of the Predicate Criterial Screen to et-Tell
While et-Tell is properly located in the Benjamin hill country, there is universal agreement among archaeologists that the site was not occupied during the LBA [Callaway (1993: 39-45)]; therefore, it fails to satisfy the first criterial screen parameter. Moreover, the area of the EBA city at et-Tell is 27.5 acres, which is nearly 4 times the screen value of 7 acres. Finally, while the EBA city at et-Tell was fortified, the only exposed gate structures are in the south or southeast sectors of the city, which contradicts the fourth parameter of the criterial screen in Table 3. Hence, the site of et-Tell satisfies, at best, only one out of three predicate criterial screen parameters, and therefore it is not a viable candidate for Joshua’s Ai.
Callaway’s hypothesis. Joseph Callaway postulates that the conquest of Ai described in chapters 7 and 8 of Joshua actually took place during IA I [Callaway (1968: 312-320)]. He identifies the small, unwalled IA village that was situated on the acropolis of et-Tell as the Ai of Joshua, the area of that site being approximately 3 acres and thus satisfying the second criterial screen parameter. While Prof. Callaway is free to speculate on a skirmish at the site of et-Tell which might have occurred during the IA, such does not correspond with the battle described in Joshua 7 and 8. Rather than taking liberties with the biblical text in an attempt to harmonize it with archaeological evidence, the present analysis is directed toward identifying a site that corresponds precisely with the biblical text as written.
Figure 1. Locations of the Three Candidate Sites For Joshua's Ai
Zevit’s hypothesis. Zevit (1985) postulates a battle scenario for the conquest of Ai as it might have played out at the site of et-Tell. Actually, there are a number of factors in the topography surrounding et-Tell which fail to correspond with the narrative of Joshua 8. In particular, there is no suitable hiding place for the 30E ambush force southwest of the site in accordance with Joshua 8:2-9.20 While there is a high ridge to the north, the intervening valley is the Wadi el-Gayeh, which is deep and steep-walled at that point. Thus, the topography north of the site precludes the playing out of the battle scenario as described in Joshua 8:9-28.
ABR Editorial note: ABR does not endorse Mr. Brigg's view that the Exodus occurred in 1406, and the Conquest in 1366. We believe the biblical texts require a date of 1446 for the Exodus and 1406 for the beginning of the Conquest.
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9. In Briggs (2007: 120-122) the factors contributing to temporal uncertainty are analyzed, which leads to the conclusion that the uncertainty associated with ceramic dating of archaeological contexts of the Late Bronze Age has a mean value of 30 years and a standard deviation around the mean value of 30 years. The mean value represents a bias such that archaeological contexts will always appear to be more ancient than they truly are.
10. Refer to Briggs (2007: 87-114) for the detailed exegesis of the biblical text in support of the formulation of the criterial screen.
11. Refer to Briggs (2007: 109) for a discussion of the data in support of at least the high ridges in the Benjamin hill country being forested at the time of Joshua.
12. This detachment, denoted the ruse attack force, was probably 3E in size to emulate the attack force of Joshua 7. It is noteworthy that if the king of Ai had accurately assessed the magnitude of the threat to the north, he would have secured the fortress and forced the Israelites to engage in a prolonged siege, for which they were neither trained nor equipped. Thus, Joshua would have kept most of the residual attack force hidden from view.
13. Refer to Briggs (2007: 100-101) for detailed exegesis of the biblical text supporting the derivation of the 6th criterial screen parameter.
14. Refer to Briggs (2007: 105-106) for detailed exegesis of the biblical text concerning “the appointed place”.
15. Refer to Figures 9-11 in Briggs (2007) for illustrations of candidate shebarim formations; refer to Briggs (2007: 131-132) and the associated Figures 22-25 for postulated engagement scenarios for the first battle of Ai.
16. Refer to Briggs (2007: 133-137) and the associated Figures 23-31 for the postulated engagement scenario for the second battle of Ai.
17. Refer to Briggs (2007: 60-63) for a discussion of the ancient military technology pertinent to this research.
18. For additional detail concerning the candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai refer to Briggs (2007: 51-53).
19. For additional detail concerning the locations and topographical contexts of the three candidate sites for Joshua’s Ai, refer to Briggs (2007: 123-128) and the associated Figures 14-21.
20. For the detailed exegesis of the biblical text in regard to the location of the encampment of the primary ambush force, refer to Briggs (2007:100-101). The combination of directional indicators in the text require that this encampment be approximately southwest of the fortress of Ai.
Amiran, R. 1970 Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land, p. 12. Rutgers University Press.
Boling, R.G. 1982 The Anchor Bible: Joshua. New York: Doubleday.
Briggs, P. 2007 Testing the Factuality of the Conquest of Ai Narrative in the Book of Joshua, 5th ed. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Trinity Southwest University Press.
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Callaway, J. A. 1968 New evidence on the conquest of ) Ai. Journal of Biblical Literature , Vol. LXXXVII, No. III, pp. 312-320.
Callaway, J. A. 1970 The 1968-1969 %Ai (et-Tell) excavations. Bulletin of American Society for Oriental Research, Vol. 198, pp. 10-12.
Callaway, J. A. 1993 Article on Ai in, The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Stern, E. (Ed.), pp. 39-45. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Cassuto, U. 1983 The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch. Translated by I. Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes.
Collins, S. 2002 Let My People Go: Using Historical Synchronisms to Identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Trinity Southwest University Press.
Collins, S. & Oller, J. W., Jr. 2000 Biblical history as true narrative representation. The Global Journal of Classical Theology, Vol. 2, No. 2.
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Hayes, W. C. 1975 Chronological tables (A) Egypt. Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. II, No. 2, p. 1038.
Hayes, J. H. & Miller, J. M. (Eds.) 1977 Israelite and Judean History. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International.
Humphreys, C. J. 1998 The number of people in the Exodus from Egypt: decoding mathematically the very large numbers in Numbers I and XXVI. Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 48, pp. 196-213.
Humphreys, C. J. 2000 The numbers in the Exodus from Egypt: a further appraisal. Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 50, pp. 323-328.
Kaiser, W. C., Jr. 1987 Toward Rediscovering the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.
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Kitchen, K. A. 1992 History of Egypt (chronology). The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Freedman, D. N. (Ed.), Vol. 2, pp. 322-331. New York: Doubleday.
Kitchen, K. A. 1996 The historical chronology of ancient Egypt: a current assessment. Acta Archaeologica, Vol. 67, pp. 1-13.
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Wood, B. G. 2000a Khirbet el-Maqatir, 1995-1998. Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 50, pp. 123-130. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.
Wood, B. G. 2000b Khirbet el-Maqatir, 1999. Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 50, pp. 249-254. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.
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WOMAN CAUGHT WITH HEROIN AND COCAINE IN HER VEHICLE
Over 21 pounds of cocaine and heroin totaling $250,000 was in a woman's Mercedes Benz
U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested a woman on Thursday afternoon April 15, 2021. She was transporting more than 21 pounds of heroin and cocaine in her vehicle in San Clemente, California.
At approximately 12 p.m., agents pulled over the female driver traveling in a silver Mercedes C300 northbound on Interstate 5. While agents questioned the driver, a K9 alerted to the trunk of the vehicle. Inside the vehicle’s trunk, agents discovered nine wrapped packages consistent with the characteristics of narcotics smuggling.
The nine packages weighed more than 21 pounds and contained 11.5 pounds of heroin and 9.8 pounds of cocaine. The narcotics have an estimated street value of $250,425.
The 22-year-old female U.S. citizen, along with the heroin and cocaine were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration for further investigation. The Mercedes Benz was seized by Border Patrol.


'It's complicated': how your NYE celebrations are being privatised
By Joseph O’Donoghue
December 30, 2018 — 12.07pm
New Year’s Eve in Sydney was always a simple affair. Dusting off that picnic rug, it was as easy as making a few salads and buying some bread rolls with a chook, putting some white wine into the cooler bag and organising the family to get to the best vantage point to watch the fireworks. What's more, it was free.
But this year, as we blink and another year whisks by, more and more councils and government agencies are turning to a “user pays” template for New Year's Eve.
Created by the state government, this seductive blueprint for councils complicates a once uncomplicated community event with shortsighted regulation and unnecessary overreach. Now, in order to gain access to the most sought after public-space vantage points, Sydneysiders must purchase tickets online for the minimum price of $40 per adult.
The ''user pays'' system was introduced in 2011 by the Office of Environment and Heritage to spots such as the Botanical Gardens and Bradleys Head on the north shore (current ticket price around $60 per adult), and local furore was immediate. Undeterred by the raucous public sentiment at the time, the concept has been ramped up and in use ever since.
With their jobs made easier by this system, NSW Police have been encouraging councils and government-sponsored organisations such as Property NSW, which manages the Circular Quay and The Rocks precincts, to adopt this "user pays" approach for safety purposes. This year, North Sydney Council will be trialling the approach at Blues Point and three more venues in The Rocks will be ticketed.
What we are witnessing is a worrying trend towards the privatisation and outsourcing of our community’s largest coming together, with councils and government agencies shirking their responsibilities around the event.
It's a ''user pays'' New Year's Eve in Sydney. Credit:Steven Siewert
Curious about the concept (and angry) I rang a few councillors to ask more about it. Apparently, these new regulations are necessary to further bolster public safety, or so I was told. “Additional safety from what, exactly?” I asked.
New Year's Eve in Sydney is famously dominated by family activity. Out of the 1.6 million revellers who attended last year, there were only 13 arrests. The Economist ranks Sydney the 7th safest city in the world, ahead of Stockholm and Zurich. So where is the danger from which we need additional protection? I wasn’t provided with many answers.
The clean-up cost for the mess we make is exorbitant, councillors told me. However, these are the same councils that charge the highest rates in the country. And Sydneysiders are already forking out $7 million to fund the fireworks. On the flipside, it’s an evening that contributes at least $130 million to the local economy. The existing business model is thriving.
It’s not until you take a step back to consider all of the new rules and processes, and their costs, that the absurdity of the concept becomes impossible to ignore.
Websites need to be built, information numbers set-up (and manned) and ticketing partners contracted. Security staff need to be hired, trained and paid at public holiday rates. Barriers must be rented, brought in on trucks, set-up, dismantled and returned.
Guests will only be allowed to access food from premium-priced food vans. While booze is illegal on the rest of the foreshore, those with tickets can buy alcohol from bars at many of the venues. Management staff, bar staff and clean-up crews all need to be paid. Bags and IDs will be checked upon entry – all of this simply to enter our own public land. How did it all get so ridiculous?
Life for the locals living in the vicinity of these events will also be more complex. If you live at Blues Point, for example, you’ll need an ID and bag check just to gain access to your own home. Guests attending your party will have their alcohol confiscated if you haven’t already "carried it in" for them by 8am New Year's Eve. Without tickets, you won’t even be able to access your own local public reserve. None of it makes any sense.
Those who aren’t locals, perhaps coming in from western Sydney, can almost forget about it. Ticketing costs on top of tolls will make accessing prime locations uneconomical and out-of-reach for many families. One can’t help but feel there is a hint of exclusionism in this new approach.
At the very least, we are being shoehorned into a segregated New Year's Eve. Split between those with tickets, who have access to the best vantage points and alcohol, and the rest of us squeezing into the remaining vantage points while banned from even clinking a celebratory glass of champagne at midnight.
This “user pays” construct seeks to put on autopilot a community event that should be nurtured. The wonderful effervescence of an entire community ringing in the New Year together should be sacred and protected. As should free access to our own public spaces to enjoy the atmosphere. Local spirit needs to be encouraged, not fenced off by our councils and police.
If we’re not happy with the new path we’re being walked down, it is up to us to let our councils know what we think about it.
Joseph O’Donoghue is head of memberships at Keep Sydney Open.