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Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. (September 19, 1907 – August 25, 1998) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987.

Born in Suffolk, Virginia, he graduated from both the Washington and Lee University School of Law and Harvard Law School and served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971 Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Powell to succeed the late Associate Justice Hugo Black. He retired from the Court during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and was eventually succeeded by Anthony Kennedy.

His tenure largely overlapped with that of Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Powell was often a key swing vote on the Burger Court. His majority opinions include United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975), Gregg v. Georgia (1976), First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), Solem v. Helm (1983), and McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), and he wrote an influential opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). He notably joined the majority in controversial cases such as United States v. United States District Court (1972), Roe v. Wade (1973), Milliken v. Bradley (1974), Harris v. McRae (1980), Plyler v. Doe (1982), and Bowers v. Hardwick (1986).

Early life and education
Powell was born in Suffolk, Virginia, the son of Mary Lewis (Gwathmey) and Louis Franklin Powell. Powell set out to attend Washington and Lee University where he became president of his fraternity, managing editor of the student newspaper, and a member of the yearbook staff. His major was in commerce, but he also studied law. Powell had always planned on becoming a lawyer because he viewed their roles as shaping history. He graduated in 1929 with a B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He also was named recipient of the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for "generous service to others".

Powell then attended Washington and Lee University School of Law and in 1931 graduated valedictorian. He received a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School in 1932, wrote a LL.M. thesis entitled "Relation between the Virginia Court of Appeals and the State Corporation Commission", and was one of two U.S. Supreme Court justices to have earned an LL.M. degree.

He was elected president of the student body as an undergraduate with the help of Mosby Perrow Jr., and the two served together on the Virginia State Board of Education in the 1960s. Powell was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Sigma Society. At a leadership conference, he met Edward R. Murrow, and they became close friends.

In 1936, he married Josephine Pierce Rucker with whom he had three daughters and one son. She died in 1996.

Military service, 1939–1945
During World War II, he first tried to join the United States Navy but was rejected because of poor eyesight, so he joined the US Army Air Forces as an Intelligence officer. After receiving his commission as a first lieutenant in 1942, he completed training at bases near Miami, Florida and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was assigned to the 319th Bombardment Group, which moved to England later that year. He served in North Africa during Operation Torch and was later assigned to the Headquarters of the Northwest African Air Forces. There, Powell served in Sicily during the Allied invasion of Sicily.

In August 1943, he was assigned to the Intelligence staff of the Army Air Forces in Washington, D.C. Slated for assignment as an instructor at the facility near Harrisburg, he worked instead on several special projects for the AAF headquarters until February 1944. He was then assigned to the Intelligence staff of the Department of War and then the Intelligence staff of United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe. While there Colonel Powell wrote in the aftermath of the 13–15 February 1945 Bombing of Dresden that "Personally, I consider this very fortunate indeed as the German people are being taught for the first time in modern history what it means to have war on their own soil."

Powell was assigned to the Ultra project, as one of the officers designated to monitor the use of intercepted Axis communications. He worked in England and in the Mediterranean Theater and ensured that the use of Ultra information was in compliance with the laws of war, and that the use of such information did not reveal the source, which would have alerted that the code had been broken.

Powell advanced through the ranks to colonel, and received the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, and French Croix de Guerre with bronze palm. He was discharged in October 1945.

Legal career
In 1941, Powell served as Chairman of the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division.

Powell was a partner for more than a quarter of a century at Hunton, Williams, Gay, Powell and Gibson, a large white shoe Virginia law firm, with its primary office in Richmond, now known as Hunton Andrews Kurth. Powell practiced primarily in the areas of corporate law, especially in the fields of business acquisitions, securities regulation, bankruptcy, real estate and railroad litigation.

From 1961 to 1962 Powell served as Chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Economics of Law Practice, which later evolved into the ABA Law Practice Division. During his tenure as chair of the committee, The Lawyers Handbook was first published and distributed to all attorneys who joined the ABA that year. In its preface, Powell wrote, "The basic concept of freedom under law, which underlies our entire structure of government, can only be sustained by a strong and independent bar. It is plainly in the public interest that the economic health of the legal profession be safeguarded. One of the means toward this end is to improve the efficiency and productivity of lawyers."

From 1964 to 1965 he was elected President of the ABA. Powell led the way in attempting to provide legal services to the poor, and he made a key decision to cooperate with the federal government's Legal Services Corporation. Powell was also involved in the development of Colonial Williamsburg, where he was both a trustee and general counsel. From 1964 until his court appointment in 1971 he was a board member of Philip Morris and acted as a contact point for the tobacco industry with Virginia Commonwealth University. Through his law firm, Powell represented the Tobacco Institute and various tobacco companies in numerous cases.

Virginia government, 1951–1970
Powell played an important role in local community affairs. From 1951 to 1961, he served on the Richmond School Board and was its chairman from 1952 to 1961. Powell presided over the school board at a time when the Commonwealth of Virginia was locked in a campaign of defiance against the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which desegregated public schools. Powell's law firm, although not Powell himself, represented one of the defendant school districts in Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was consolidated later into Brown.

The Richmond School Board had no authority at the time to force integration, however, as control over attendance policies had been transferred to the state government. Powell, like most white Southern leaders of his day, did not speak out against the state's defiance, but he fostered close working relationships with many black leaders, such as civil rights lawyer Oliver Hill, some of whom offered key support for Powell's Supreme Court nomination. In 1990, Powell swore in Virginia's first black governor, Douglas Wilder.

From 1961 to 1969, Powell served on the Virginia Board of Education; he was chairman from 1968 to 1969.

Powell Memorandum, 1971
On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum for the chamber entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist and anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America. It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement. Powell saw it as an undermining of the power of private business and a step toward socialism. His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths. He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry.

The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. It inspired wealthy heirs of earlier American industrialists, the Earhart Foundation (whose money came from an oil fortune), and the Smith Richardson Foundation (from the cough medicine dynasty) to use their private charitable foundations, which did not have to report their political activities, to join the Carthage Foundation, founded by Richard Mellon Scaife in 1964. The Carthage Foundation pursued Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimally government-regulated America based on what he thought America had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Powell Memorandum ultimately came to be a blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and inspired the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active. CUNY professor David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo. Historian Gary Gerstle refers to the memo as "a neoliberal call to arms." Political scientist Aaron Good describes it as an "inverted totalitarian manifesto" designed to identify threats to the established economic order following the democratic upsurge of the 1960s.

Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Nader as the chief antagonist of American business. Powell urged conservatives to undertake a sustained media-outreach program, including funding neoliberal scholars, publishing books, papers, popular magazines, and scholarly journals, and influencing public opinion.

This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections by independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti.

Although written confidentially for Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce, it was discovered by Jack Anderson, a columnist with The Washington Post, who reported on its content a year later, after Powell had joined the Supreme Court. Anderson alleged that Powell was trying to undermine the democratic system; however, in terms of business's view of itself in relation to government and public interest groups, the memo could be alternatively read to simply convey conventional thinking among businessmen at the time. The explicit goal of the memo was not to destroy democracy, though its emphasis on political institution-building as a concentration of big business power, particularly updating the Chamber's efforts to influence federal policy, has had that effect. Here, it was a major force in motivating the Chamber and other groups to modernize their efforts to lobby the federal government. Following the memo's directives, conservative foundations greatly increased, pouring money into think-tanks. This rise of conservative lobbying led to the conservative intellectual movement and its increasing influence over mainstream political discourse, starting in the 1970s and 1980s, and due chiefly to the works of the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Supreme Court tenure, 1972–1987
In 1969, Nixon asked him to join the Supreme Court, but Powell turned him down, and Judge Warren Burger of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was appointed instead. In 1971, Nixon asked him again. Powell was unsure, but Nixon and his Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, persuaded him that joining the Court was his duty to the nation. One of the primary concerns that Powell had was the effect leaving his law firm and joining the high court would have on his personal financial status, as he enjoyed a very lucrative private practice at his law firm. Another of Powell's major concerns was that as a corporate attorney, he would be unfamiliar with many of the issues that would come before the Supreme Court, which, as now, heard very few corporate law cases. Powell feared that would place him at a disadvantage and make it unlikely that he would be able to influence his colleagues.

Nixon nominated Powell and William Rehnquist to the Court on the same day, October 21, 1971. Powell's nomination generated no controversy and he took over the seat of Hugo Black after being confirmed by the Senate 89–1 on December 6, 1971 (the lone "nay" came from Oklahoma Democrat Fred R. Harris). On the day of Powell's swearing-in, when Rehnquist's wife Nan asked Josephine Powell if this was the most exciting day of her life, Josephine said, "No, it is the worst day of my life. I am about to cry."

Lewis Powell served from January 7, 1972, until June 26, 1987, when he retired from the Court.

Powell was among the 7–2 majority who legalized abortion in the United States in Roe v. Wade (1973). Powell's pro-choice stance on abortion stemmed from an incident during his tenure at his Richmond law firm, when the girlfriend of one of Powell's office staff bled to death from an illegal self-induced abortion.

Powell, who dissented in the case of Furman v. Georgia (1972), striking down capital punishment statutes, was a key mover behind the Court's compromise opinion in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which allowed the return of capital punishment but only with strengthened procedural safeguards. In Coker v. Georgia (1977), a convicted murderer escaped from prison and, in the course of committing an armed robbery and other offenses, raped an adult woman. The State of Georgia sentenced the rapist to death. Justice Powell, acknowledging that the woman had been raped, expressed the view that "the victim [did not] sustain serious or lasting injury" and voted to set the death penalty aside. In that same case, Powell also wrote to rebuke the plurality's statement that "for the rape victim, life may not be nearly so happy as it was, but it is not over and normally is not beyond repair," instead stating that "[s]ome victims are so grievously injured physically or psychologically that life is beyond repair."

He joined the majority opinion in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), which struck down a forced school busing plan which would was designed to racially integrate 53 Detroit area public school districts across district lines. They had inadvertently become segregated due to white flight to the suburbs. The majority ruled against the busing because the schools hadn't been segregated by law.

His opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), joined by no other justice in full, represented a compromise between the opinions of Justice William J. Brennan, who, joined by three other progressive justices, would have upheld affirmative action programs under a lenient judicial test, and the opinion of John Paul Stevens, joined by three other justices, who would have struck down the university's use of racial quotas at issue in the case under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Powell's opinion striking down the law urged "strict scrutiny" to be applied to affirmative action programs but hinted that some affirmative action programs might pass Constitutional muster.

Powell wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), which overturned a Massachusetts law restricting corporate contributions to referendum campaigns not directly related to their business.

In spite of supporting legal abortion, Powell ruled with the majority in Harris v. McRae (1980), which held that states participating in Medicaid are not required to fund medically necessary abortions for which federal reimbursement was unavailable as a result of the Hyde Amendment, which restricted the use of federal funds for abortion. The Court also held that the funding restrictions of the Hyde Amendment did not violate the Fifth Amendment or the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

In the controversial case of Snepp v. U.S. (1980), the Court issued a per curiam upholding the lower court's imposition of a constructive trust upon former CIA agent Frank Snepp and its requirement for preclearance of all his published writings with the CIA for the rest of his life. In 1997, Snepp gained access to the files of Justices Thurgood Marshall (who had already died) and William J. Brennan Jr. (who voluntarily granted Snepp access) and confirmed his suspicion that Powell had been the author of the per curiam opinion. Snepp later pointed out that Powell had misstated the factual record and had not reviewed the actual case file (Powell was in the habit of writing opinions based on the briefs alone) and that the only justice who even looked at the case file was John Paul Stevens, who relied upon it in composing his dissent. From his days in counterintelligence during World War II, Powell believed in the need for government secrecy and urged the same position on his colleagues during the Court's consideration of 1974's United States v. Nixon.

In 1982, Powell joined the 5–4 majority opinion in Plyler v. Doe, holding that a Texas law forbidding illegal immigrant children from public education was unconstitutional. Powell had a mixed record in deciding cases, but joined the Court's four liberal Justices to declare the law unconstitutional.

Powell was the deciding vote in Bowers v. Hardwick,, in which the Court upheld Georgia's sodomy laws. He was reportedly conflicted over how to vote. A conservative clerk, Michael W. Mosman, advised him to uphold the ban, and Powell, who believed he had never met a gay person, not realizing that one of his own clerks was a closeted homosexual, voted to uphold Georgia's sodomy law. However, he, in a concurring opinion, expressed concern at the length of the prison terms prescribed by the law, criticizing them as excessive. The Court, 17 years later, expressly overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas,. In 1990, after his retirement from the Court, he said, "I think I made a mistake in the Hardwick case," marking one of the few times a justice expressed regret for one of his previous rulings. Scholars would later conclude that Powell unknowingly hired more gay clerks than any other Justice. Paul M. Smith, the gay attorney who argued in favor of overturning Bowers, is a former clerk for Justice Powell.

Powell also expressed post-retirement regret over his majority opinion in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), where he voted to uphold the death penalty against a study that demonstrated that, except as punishment for the most violent of crimes, murderers sentenced for killing white victims were up to forty times more likely to receive the death penalty than people who killed black victims. In an interview with his biographer, he stated that he no longer supported the death penalty.

Retirement and death, 1987–1998
Powell was nearly 80 years old when he retired from his position as Supreme Court justice in June 1987. His career on the bench was described by Gerald Gunther, a professor of constitutional law at Stanford Law School, as "truly distinguished" because of his "qualities of temperament and character," which "made it possible for him, more than any contemporary, to perform his tasks in accordance with the modest, restrained, yet creative model of judging."

He was succeeded by Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy was the third nominee for his position. The first, Robert Bork, was rejected by the United States Senate after a bitter confirmation fight. The second, Douglas H. Ginsburg, withdrew his name from consideration after admitting to having smoked marijuana both as a college undergraduate and with his students while a law professor.

Following his retirement from the high court, he sat regularly on various United States Courts of Appeals around the country.

In 1990, Douglas Wilder asked Powell to swear him in as governor of Virginia, and the first elected African-American governor in the United States.

Powell died at his home in the Windsor Farms area of Richmond, Virginia, of pneumonia, at 4:30 in the morning of August 25, 1998, at the age of 90. He is buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery.

Legacy
In her 2002 book, The Majesty of the Law, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "For those who seek a model of human kindness, decency, exemplary behavior, and integrity, there will never be a better man."

Powell's personal and official papers were donated to his alma mater, Washington and Lee University School of Law, where they are open for research, subject to certain restrictions. A wing at Sydney Lewis Hall, home of W&L Law, which houses his papers, is named for him.

J. Harvie Wilkinson, a judge on the Fourth Circuit, and former law clerk for Justice Powell, wrote a book titled Serving Justice: A Supreme Court Clerk's View describing the experience.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into law an act of Congress renaming the Federal courthouse at Richmond, Virginia, in his honor, the Lewis F. Powell Jr. United States Courthouse.

title: Lewis F. Powell Jr.


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Talk:Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Untitled
The French page on this is an utter stub. Could a native French speaker translate what we have here? seglea 20:59, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Identification of "Romans, France"
I have pointed the link on "Romans" (town in France) to Romans, Deux-Sèvres. If anyone believes this to be incorrect please revise the link. ("Romans" as such is a disambiguation page, not an article.) Thanks. --Disambiguation link repair - You can help! --Iggle 08:35, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to add an English translation to the bibliography. "Le Climat depuis l'an Mil" exists in an English translation: Le Roy Ladurie, E., Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000, trans. Barbara Bray (London, 1972).

Key Source
This article and the bibliography seems to be very similar to the section on Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in Marnie Hughes-Warrington's Fifty Key Thinkers in History. Perhaps a reference is needed if that is true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ekkr (talk • contribs) 23:39, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Bukharin's torture
The reference to Bukharin's reason for confession requires citation, in my opinion, and the fact of his torture by the NKVD far as I know is not supported or at least contested. See, for example: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2009.107.1.56 Hellbeck, Jochen. “With Hegel to Salvation: Bukharin's Other Trial.” Representations, vol. 107, no. 1, 2009, pp. 56–90. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2009.107.1.56 ]

I would remove the phrase "but the truth was rather more brutal and sordid: Bukharin had been psychologically "broken" after months of torture by the NKVD, and had been reduced to such a state that he was willing to "confess" to anything", what to replace it with, if anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LemuelCushing (talk • contribs) 13:51, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

 * The entire lengthy paragraph explaining the contents of Darkness at Noon in detail has no place in this article, except for the initial and last two sentences, which contain ELRL's take on it. Even so, the importance of this episode remains to be demonstrated and can hardly be a substitute for a factual account of ELRL's involvement in PCF's politics. VampaVampa (talk) 12:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

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James Hydrick

James Alan Hydrick (born February 28, 1959) is an American former stage performer and self-described psychic.

Hydrick claimed to be able to perform acts of telekinesis, such as his trademark trick of moving a pencil resting at the edge of a table. Following a nationally televised demonstration of his abilities on That's Incredible!, he was unable to prove his supernatural abilities on That's My Line, and later confessed the fraud.

Hydrick was imprisoned for child molestation in 1989; he remains in a psychiatric hospital.

Early life
Hydrick was born in South Carolina to 36-year-old father Billy Hydrick and 13-year-old mother Lois Hydrick. His father was allegedly abusive. In 1989, he told an interviewer that he started learning karate at age six to protect himself from his father after seeing one of his brothers beaten to death. He and his other siblings later lived in a series of foster homes and orphanages.

Hydrick was convicted of kidnapping and torture in 1977, for which he was imprisoned. He escaped three times: he allegedly kicked through a concrete wall in a Georgia jail, broke through gates at a South Carolina prison, and finally, in 1982, he pole-vaulted over a fence at a state prison in Utah.

Rise to fame
Throughout the 1970s, Hydrick was arrested repeatedly for crimes ranging from burglary to assault. Despite his difficult background and ongoing legal troubles, Hydrick gained prominence for his karate and sleight of hand tricks, earning national television exposure and a cult following. He claimed he was able to use psychokinesis to turn the pages of books and make pencils spin around on desks, among other feats. Hydrick also set up martial arts classes and claimed he could pass on the gift of psychokinesis to children through special training techniques, which was shown in 1989 to be a front for his coercing children into performing sexual favors for him, and was a factor in his conviction for sexual assault of a minor.

Hydrick's most visible demonstration of his purported skills was in an episode of the series That's Incredible! that originally aired in December 1980 and repeated in 1981. He performed the pencil-spinning trick with the host John Davidson's hand on his mouth to block him from exhaling (after Davidson suggested that he could hear Hydrick blowing). However, Hydrick had readjusted the pencil beforehand so that it was as precarious as possible and would move with the slight manipulation of his hands. He also caused a page from a telephone book to turn over, allegedly by telekinesis. Magician and paranormal skeptic James Randi awarded the program a 1980 Uri Award, later renamed the Pigasus Award, "for declaring a simple magic trick to be genuine."

Exposure as fraud
James Randi replicated the pencil trick on a similar show, That's My Line, hosted by Bob Barker, demonstrating that it was a simple illusion and not a product of telekinesis. Hydrick and Randi both appeared in a follow-up episode of the show, Hydrick to demonstrate his telekinesis, while Randi was determined to prove it was only a trick. Barker and Randi offered $10,000 if Hydrick would be able to move the pages of a phone book under certain conditions. To do this, Randi placed foam peanuts on the table around the phone book to show if Hydrick was actually turning the pages by blowing on them. As Hydrick attempted to turn the page, his "powers" failed him; he claimed that the stage lights were causing the foam pieces to generate a static electric charge which, when added to the weight of the page, required more force than he was able to generate to turn the page; Randi and the judges countered that this hypothesis had no scientific basis. After 45 minutes with no results, Hydrick finally conceded his inability to complete the challenge, and the judging panel, which included a parapsychologist, declared that no supernatural phenomenon had taken place. At the end of the episode, Randi, to further discredit Hydrick, performed the same trick, openly demonstrating the blowing technique Hydrick used.

In 1981, Hydrick's so-called psychic powers were conclusively exposed as frauds by investigative journalist and professional magician Dan Korem. Hydrick confessed to Korem that he had developed his trick in prison, and that he had not learned it from a Chinese master as he originally claimed. Hydrick confessed, "My whole idea behind this in the first place was to see how dumb America was. How dumb the world is."

Child molestation
Wanted on an outstanding warrant, Hydrick was apprehended after police saw him discussing psychic powers on the Sally Jessy Raphael talk show. In 1989, Hydrick was sentenced to 17 years for molesting five boys in Huntington Beach, California. After serving his sentence, he was remanded to Atascadero State Hospital for treatment under the state's sexually violent predator law. Psychologist Jesus Padilla described Hydrick as "an extremely difficult patient" who suffers from pedophilia, paraphilia, and antisocial personality disorder. Hydrick petitioned for release in May 2013, but a trial resulted in a hung jury. , he is housed at the Coalinga State Hospital.

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Tărtăria tablets

The Tărtăria tablets are three tablets, reportedly discovered in 1961 at a Neolithic site in the village of Tărtăria in Săliștea commune (about 30 km from Alba Iulia), from Transylvania.

The tablets bear incised symbols associated with the corpus of the Vinča symbols and have been the subject of considerable controversy among archaeologists, some of whom have argued that the symbols represent the earliest known form of writing in the world. Accurately dating the tablets is difficult as the stratigraphy pertaining to their discovery is disputed, and a heat treatment performed after their discovery has prevented the possibility of directly radiocarbon dating the tablets.

Based on the account of their discovery which associates the tablets with the Vinča culture and on indirect radiocarbon evidence, some scientists propose that the tablets date to around c. 5300 BC, predating Mesopotamian pictographic proto-writing. Some scholars have disputed the authenticity of the account of their discovery, suggesting the tablets are an intrusion from the upper strata of the site. Other scholars, contesting the radiocarbon dates for Neolithic Southeastern Europe, have suggested that Tărtăria signs are in some way related to Mesopotamian proto-writing, particularly Sumerian proto-cuneiform, which they argued was contemporary.

Discovery
In 1961, members of a team led by Nicolae Vlassa (an archaeologist at the National Museum of Transylvanian History, Cluj-Napoca) reportedly unearthed three inscribed but unfired clay tablets, twenty-six clay and stone figurines, a shell bracelet, and the burnt, broken, and disarticulated bones of an adult female sometimes referred to as "Milady Tărtăria".

There is no consensus on the interpretation of the burial, but it has been suggested that the body was likely that of a respected local wise-person, shaman, or spirit-medium.

Disputed authenticity
It is disputed whether the tablets were actually found at the reported site, and Vlassa never discussed the circumstances of the find of the stratigraphy.

The authenticity of the engravings has also been disputed. A recent claim of forgery is based on the similarity between some of the symbols and reproductions of Sumerian symbols in popular Romanian literature available at the time of the discovery.

Description
Two of the tablets are rectangular and the third is round. They are all small, the round one being only 6 cm across, and two—the round one and one rectangular tablet—have holes drilled through them. All three have symbols inscribed on only one face. The unpierced rectangular tablet depicts a horned animal, an unclear figure, and a vegetal motif such as a branch or tree. The others consist of a variety of mainly abstract symbols.

Dating
Workers at the conservation department of the Cluj museum baked the originally unbaked clay tablets in order to preserve them, making it impossible to directly date the tablets with the carbon 14 method.

The tablets are generally believed to have belonged to the Vinča-Turdaș culture, which was originally thought to have originated around 2700 BCE by Serbian and Romanian archaeologists. The discovery garnered attention from the archeological world because it predates the first Minoan writing, the oldest known writing in Europe.

Subsequent radiocarbon dating of the other Tărtăria finds, extended by association also to the tablets, pushed the date of the site (and therefore of the whole Vinča culture) to approximately 5500 BCE, the time of the early Eridu phase of the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. Still, this is disputed in light of apparently contradictory stratigraphic evidence.

It has been controversially claimed that if the symbols are indeed a form of writing, then writing in the Danubian culture would far predate the earliest Sumerian cuneiform script or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thus, they would be the world's earliest known form of writing.

Hypothesis of Danubian culture
The term Danubian culture was proposed by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first agrarian society in central and eastern Europe. This hypothesis and the appearance of writing in this space is supported by Marco Merlini, Harald Haarmann, Joan Marler, Gheorghe Lazarovici, and many others.

Proposed links to Sumerian culture
Colin Renfrew argues that the apparent similarities with Sumerian symbols are deceptive: "'To me, the comparison made between the signs on the Tărtăria tablets and those of proto-literate Sumeria carry very little weight. They are all simple pictographs, and a sign for a goat in one culture is bound to look much like the sign for a goat in another. To call these Balkan signs 'writing' is perhaps to imply that they had an independent significance of their own communicable to another person without oral contact. This I doubt.'"

Artifacts bearing Vinča symbols
The Vinča symbols have been known since the late 19th century excavation by Zsófia Torma (1832–1899) at the Neolithic site of Turdaș (Hungarian: Tordos) in Transylvania, at the time part of Austria-Hungary, the type site of the Tordos culture, a late, regional variation of the Vinča culture.

Other artifacts
This group of artifacts, including the tablets, have some relation with the culture developed in the Black Sea – Aegean Sea area. Similar artefacts have been found in Bulgaria (e.g. the Gradeshnitsa tablets) and northern Greece (the Dispilio Tablet). The material and the style used for the Tartaria artefacts show some similarities to those used in the Cyclades area, as two of the statuettes are made of alabaster.

Purpose and meaning
The meaning (if any) of the symbols is unknown, and their nature has been the subject of much debate.

Writing system
Scholars who conclude that the inscribed symbols are writing are basing their assessment on a few assumptions that are not universally endorsed:
 * The existence of similar signs on other artifacts of the Danube civilization suggest that there was an inventory of standard shapes used by scribes.
 * The symbols are highly standardised and have a rectilinear shape comparable to that manifested by archaic writing systems.
 * The information communicated by each character was specific, with an unequivocal meaning.
 * The inscriptions are sequenced in rows, whether horizontal, vertical, or circular.

If they do comprise a script, it is not known what kind of writing system they represent. Vlassa interpreted one of the Tărtăria tablets as a hunting scene and the other two with signs as a kind of primitive writing similar to the early pictograms of the Sumerians. Some archaeologists who support the idea that they do represent writing, notably Marija Gimbutas, have proposed that they are fragments of a system dubbed the Old European Script.

Non-linguistic signs
One problem is the lack of independent indications of literacy existing in the Balkans at this period. Sarunas Milisauskas comments that "it is extremely difficult to demonstrate archaeologically whether a corpus of symbols constitutes a writing system" and notes that the first known writing systems were all developed by early states to facilitate record-keeping in complex organised societies in the Middle East and Mediterranean. There is no evidence of organised states in the European Neolithic, thus it is unlikely they would have needed the administrative systems facilitated by writing. David Anthony notes that Chinese characters were first used for ritual and commemorative purposes associated with the 'sacred power' of kings; it is possible that a similar usage accounts for the Tărtăria symbols. Some scholars have suggested that the symbols may have been used as marks of ownership or as the focus of religious rituals.

An alternative suggestion is that they may have been merely uncomprehending imitations of more advanced cultures, although this explanation is made rather unlikely by the great antiquity of the tablets—there were no known literate cultures at the time from which the symbols could have been adopted.

Others consider the pictograms to be accompanied by random scribbles.

title: Tărtăria tablets


text:
Töysä

Töysä is a former municipality in Western Finland. It was consolidated to Alavus on 1 January 2013. It is part of the Southern Ostrobothnia region. The municipality had a population of 3,122 (31 December 2012) and covered an area of 309.66 km2 of which 11.91 km2 was water. The population density is. Most inhabitants speak Finnish, with hardly any other languages being spoken.

Töysä is known for its shopping village Tuuri and the Veljekset Keskinen department store.

History
The village of Töysäjärvi was established sometime before 1568. It was larger than the modern Töysä and a part of the Lapua parish. When the Kuortane chapel community was formed in 1645, Töysäjärvi was one of its villages. By the 17th century, the village's name had been shortened to Töysä. Its western part was called Ala-Töysä while the eastern part was called Yli-Töysä. In 1798, Kuortane became a parish while Yli-Töysä became a chapel community within Kuortane named Töysä. At the same time, Ala-Töysä was moved to the Alavus chapel community. The name Ala-Töysä was later supplanted by Ranta-Töysä.

Töysä became a municipality in 1865 and got a parish in 1926. Töysä was consolidated with Alavus in 2013.

Notable people

 * Jari-Matti Latvala, rally driver
 * Olli-Pekka Karjalainen, former hammer thrower
 * Jani Wickholm, pop singer

title: Töysä


text:
Division of the assembly

In parliamentary procedure, a division of the assembly, division of the house, or simply division is a method of taking a vote that physically counts members voting.

Historically, and often still today, members are literally divided into physically separate groups. This was the method used in the Roman Senate (vote per secessionem), and occasionally in Athenian democracy. Westminster system parliament chambers have separate division lobbies for the "Ayes" and "Noes" to facilitate physical division. In several assemblies, a division bell is rung throughout the building when a division is happening, in order to alert members not present in the chamber. In the United Kingdom, division bells are also present in a number of bars and restaurants near the Palace of Westminster in order to call members to vote who may be outside the building.

House of Representatives
In the Australian House of Representatives divisions follow a form similar to that of the United Kingdom, but the requirements are generally more stringent. For instance, a Member in the Chamber when the tellers are appointed must vote, while a Member not then present may not. Furthermore, members must vote in accordance to their voice votes.

The voice vote is held as in the British House of Commons. If more than one Member objects, then the division bells are rung throughout the Parliamentary estate. When not less than four minutes have elapsed since the question was first put, the Speaker orders that the doors to the Chamber be locked, and directs that the Ayes proceed to the right side of the Chamber, and that the Noes proceed to the left. Members then take seats on the appropriate side of the Chamber, rather than entering a lobby, and then the Speaker appoints tellers for each side, unless fewer than five Members are seated on one side, in which case the Speaker calls off the division and declares the result for the side with the greater number of Members. If the division is still on, the tellers count and record the names of the Members. The Speaker announces the result, but does not vote unless there is an equality of votes. (If only one Member objects, his objection may be noted on the Hansard, but no vote is taken.)

Senate
In the Australian Senate, a procedure similar to that of the House of Representatives is followed. The voice vote is taken, and, if two Senators object, a division is held. Senators take seats in the right or left of the Chamber as in the House, and the President of the Senate appoints one teller for each side to record the votes. The President may vote by stating to the Senate the side on which he intends to vote. If the result of the division is an equality of votes, then the motion is in all cases disagreed to.

Parliament of Victoria
The Victorian Legislative Assembly has adopted the party voting procedure for divisions identical to that used by the New Zealand Parliament for most divisions. The Victorian Legislative Council, as well as the Legislative Assembly for conscience issues, continues to use the standing vote procedure adopted by the federal Parliament.

Canada
The procedure used in the House of Commons of Canada is similar to that in the British House of Commons, with a few differences. The Speaker reads the question aloud, and then asks, "Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?" If anyone dissents, the Speaker then states "all those in favour of the motion will please say yea." After the cries of 'yea', the Speaker says "all those opposed will please say nay," and all members opposed to the question cry out 'nay' all at once. The Speaker then announces his opinion of the outcome of the vote. If five or more MPs challenge the Speaker's opinion, a formal division follows.

A formal division is invoked by the Speaker asking to "call in the members." Bells are rung throughout the Parliament Buildings for either 15 or 30 minutes to allow all present MPs time to enter the chamber and take their seats. The division begins with the whips from both the government and the official opposition bowing to the Speaker and each other before returning to their seats.

There are no division lobbies in the House of Commons, so each member votes by simply standing up from his or her seat. "Yea" votes are recorded first, followed by the "Nay" votes, on the Speaker's order. Finally, the clerk of the house reads the result of the vote aloud to the Speaker.

Germany
In the German Bundestag and some state parliaments the president can call for the so-called Hammelsprung (literally, wether’s leap) if an undisputed majority couldn't be established by either MPs raising their hands or standing in order to cast their votes. In this voting procedure the MPs leave the plenary hall and re-enter through one of three doors designated for "yes“ (ja), "abstention" (enthaltung), or "no" (nein).

According to the Duden dictionary, the expression refers to the MPs grouping themselves like sheep behind their respective bellwethers before re-entering the chamber. The procedure was introduced in 1874 by a Reichstag vice president. In 1894 the architect of the new Reichstag building made a reference to the Hammelsprung: above the door for "yes", he depicted Ulysses and his friends escaping from Polyphemus.

Ireland
In Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, a division is a formal count that can be called for if a voice vote is deemed insufficient. The procedure for voting and divisions is specified by standing orders 70–77. In Seanad Éireann, the upper house, a similar procedure is laid out by standing orders 56–63. In the Dáil the Ceann Comhairle (chair) puts the question and TDs (deputies) present say the Irish word tá (yes) or níl (no) respectively if they agree or disagree. The Ceann Comhairle then gives an opinion on the voice vote. Any TD may demand a division by calling Vótáil (vote). Since 2016, in an effort to reduce delays, many divisions are deferred until a weekly division time on Thursdays when they are taken one after another. Previous to this, if the Ceann Comhairle suspected that fewer than ten TDs had called for a division, he asked them to rise; if the number was less than ten, their names were entered in the Dáil record but no division occurred. This process still is still used when holding the Thursday vote on a question, but the deferral of the vote until Thursday happens regardless of how few demand a vote.

The Dáil and Seanad division bells are reproductions respectively of the Lough Lene Bell and the Bell of Armagh; At a division, bells sound and bulbs light around Leinster House and the adjoining Oireachtas buildings, calling legislators to the chamber; with differing sounds and lights for Dáil and Seanad votes. The bells ring for between two and six minutes, and the doors to the chamber are locked after a further one to four minutes. The Ceann Comhairle then appoints two tellers for each side and deputies present are given one minute to vote. Voting is usually electronic, with deputies pressing either the Tá (yes) or Níl (no) button on their desks. After the voting time has concluded a Division Paper recording the result and each TD's vote is signed by the four tellers and given to the Ceann Comhairle, who declares the result. Electronic voting was introduced in 2002. The traditional practice of voting by physically entering division lobbies is retained for some symbolically important votes: confidence motions and nominations of Ceann Comhairle, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and cabinet ministers.

A group of at least 20 TDs may demand a non-electronic repeat of an electronic vote. A summer 2016 upgrade to the electronic voting system allowed a change to standing orders such that TDs may have an abstention from voting (Staon) formally recorded; for other purposes this is treated the same as not voting.

Since 2016, the Ceann Comhairle has been elected in a secret ballot by alternative vote (ranked ballot), with the winner's ensuing nomination uncontested without a division. Secret-ballot single transferable vote elections were used in the 1920s, for the Dáil's 30 nominees to the 1922 Seanad, and for the Dáil and Seanad's separate slates of candidates in the 1925 Seanad election. Ballots were distributed and submitted in the assembly chamber, then removed for counting; Dáil results were announced by the Ceann Comhairle in the chamber, whereas the Seanad adjourned for the day and allowed its Cathaoirleach (chair) to announce the results to the press that evening.

Incidents
During the renomination of Taoiseach of Fianna Fáil's Jack Lynch after the 1969 election, the division bell continued to ring after the doors had been locked, while several Fianna Fáil deputies entered the chamber through an unlocked door.

In October 2019 several TDs admitted having, over previous months, pressed the voting button of an absent party colleague, either by accident or when they believed the colleague was elsewhere in the chamber during the division. News media reported that the Ceann Comhairle would propose suspending electronic voting pending investigation. On 22 October the Dáil committee on procedure commissioned a review by the clerk of the Dáil of the instances first reported, which had occurred on 17 October. The clerk's review and recommended changes to procedure was endorsed and published by the committee on 24 October, and debated in the Dáil chamber the same day. Some politicians described the report as a whitewash.

New Zealand
In the New Zealand House of Representatives, division of the assembly occurs when the result of a voice vote on a motion is split, and a member disagrees with the Speaker's call. There are two methods for handling a division: a party vote and a personal vote.

A party vote is the most common method, and occurs for non-conscience issues and some conscience issues. In this method, the Clerk of the House reads out each party's name in order of the number of seats each party has, starting with the largest party, followed by any independent members and any members wishing to cross the floor. A member of the party (usually a whip) will respond to their party's name by stating how many members of the party are in favour or opposed. The Clerk tallies up the votes and gives the results to the Speaker, who declares the result. A split party vote is a variation of the party vote, used for some conscience issues. The main difference is voting members state how many members of their party are in favour and how many members are opposed, and once the voting is completed, must table a list of the members of the party and how they voted.

A personal vote is used mainly for conscience issues, and follows similar procedures to other Westminster systems. In the event of a personal vote, the division bells are rung for seven minutes, and after the bells stops, members are instructed to move to one of two lobbies, "Ayes" or "Noes", to have their vote recorded as such. Once all the votes are tallied, the results are handed to the speaker who declares the result.

An unusual division occurred on 30 August 2012, simulating an exhaustive ballot for a three-way conscience vote on New Zealand's legal drinking age. All members were directed to the Noes lobby, where the Clerk of the House recorded each member's vote (either for keeping the age at 18, raising the age to 20, or raising the off-licence age to 20 while keeping the on-licence age at 18) as they passed back into the main debating chamber. The votes were tallied and handed back to the Speaker, who declared the results as 50 votes for 18 years, 38 votes for 20 years, and 33 votes for an 18/20 split. As no option acquired the 61-vote majority needed, the option with the lowest number of votes (18/20 split) was dropped, and the members voted again as per a normal personal vote, using the Ayes lobby for 18 years and Noes lobby for 20 years.

House of Commons
In the House of Commons, the Speaker says "The Question is that...", states the question and next says "As many as there are of the opinion say Aye". Then, following shouts of "Aye", the Speaker says "Of the contrary, No" and similar shouts of "No" may follow. If one side clearly has more support, the Speaker then announces their opinion as to the winner, stating, for example, "I think the Ayes have it, the Ayes have it". Otherwise, the Speaker declares a division.

Any member may object to the Speaker's determination. If feeling that the division is unnecessary, the Speaker may first ask those who support the determination of the voice vote to rise, and then ask those who oppose the opinion to rise. Then, the Speaker may either declare that the ruling on the voice vote stands, or proceed to a division.

If a division is to be taken, the Speaker first states, "Division! Clear the lobbies!" Like all parliamentary procedure, there is a historical reason for the tradition. In this case it was a division that took place on 27 February 1771 when a non-MP (known as a 'stranger'), Thomas Hunt, was included in the 'Noes' vote. It subsequently transpired that he had voted several times previously. The division bell then sounds across the Parliamentary Estate as well as several buildings in the vicinity, such as restaurants and pubs. (For a full list see external bells.) The lobbies are cleared of strangers, these days primarily journalists, but historically could have been members of the public. Division bells notify any members not currently in the chamber that a vote is about to start. A recent development has been the use of pagers and mobile phones by party whips, to summon members from further afield. At the beginning of a division, two MPs who intend to vote in favour and two MPs who intend to vote against communicate to the Speaker their intentions to act as tellers.

Two minutes into the division the Speaker puts the question to the House again. If it is clear that a division is still required, the Speaker announces the names of the tellers. In order to ensure impartiality, in each lobby there is one teller for the Ayes (i.e. a teller who intends to vote in favour) and one teller for the Noes (i.e. a teller who intends to vote against). If there are tellers for one side but not for the other, the question is decided in favour of the side for which there are tellers (for instance, if there are no tellers for the Noes, the Aye side automatically wins the division, and vice versa).

MPs have to walk through one of the two division lobbies on either side of the House, tapping their pass against one of several readers installed in the lobbies, in order to vote. They are then counted by the two tellers as they leave the lobby; the numbers they record are the definitive result of the division. The whips keep check on which MPs enter which lobby and try to persuade them to enter the lobby that the party would like them to enter. Until 2020, the names of Members voting in each lobby were recorded by clerks rather than electronic systems, but this procedure was reformed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Division List, recording the way in which MPs voted, is automatically made available on the Parliament website soon after a division. In October 2022, then-Prime Minister Liz Truss was erroneously thought to have abstained from her own government's motion against a Labour motion to ban fracking as she had forgotten to swipe her voting card.

MPs with a direct financial interest on any matter are prohibited from voting. In order to act as a disqualification, the matter must be immediate and personal and not a general or remote matter.

Originally, there was only one lobby. After the fire of 1834, the House of Commons Chamber was rebuilt. At that time, a second lobby was added.

Eight minutes after the question has been put for the first time, the Speaker declares, "Lock the doors!" The lobby entrances are locked, and only those within the lobbies may continue to vote.

After all members have voted in the lobbies, the vote totals are written on a card and the numbers are read out to the House by one of the tellers of the winning side announcing as follows; "The Ayes to the right: (number of votes), The Noes to the left: (number of votes)". The Speaker then announces these numbers a second time, announcing the final result by saying "The Ayes/Noes have it, the Ayes/Noes have it". The Speaker then adds: "Unlock." Tellers are not included among the numbers announced to the Speaker. The Speaker only votes if a tie arises; in that case, he (or she) verbally announces his (or her) vote, which is cast in accordance with Speaker Denison's rule.

Members may signify, but not record, an abstention by remaining in their seats during the division. Though the practice is traditionally frowned upon, MPs can also pass through both lobbies, effectively registering their abstention.

It is stipulated that all Members of Parliament are required to stay in or around the premises of the House of Commons until the main business of the day has ended, however long that may be. In the unlikely event that fewer than forty members participate in the division (including the speaker and the tellers), the division is declared 'inquorate', the question at hand is postponed until the next sitting, and the House proceeds to the next business.

The nature of divisions in the House of Commons is one which traditionally could go on well into the night, sometimes past midnight. However, in 2000 the House introduced, on an experimental basis, the procedure of "Deferred Divisions." Essentially, some divisions are delayed until the next Wednesday. The procedure is used for very few matters; most divisions still occur normally.

There have been suggestions that electronic voting may be easier and quicker to do than physically going through a division lobby. However, MPs have often found that a division is the best way to interact with senior members of the government.

There are two variations to the normal practice of an MP voting by walking through the respective lobby.

Nodding through
There have been cases where Members of Parliament are wheeled from far afield to vote for their party in a crucial vote. For members who are too ill to reach the lobby, there is a procedure called 'nodding through' provided the tellers agree. The whips will ensure that the MP's name is added to the list of those voting. There are only two conditions. The MP must be within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, and must be alive. Former MP Joe Ashton remembered a case from the final days of James Callaghan's government:

"I remember the famous case of Leslie Spriggs, the then Member for St. Helens. We had a tied vote and he was brought to the House in an ambulance having suffered a severe heart attack. The two Whips went out to look in the ambulance and there was Leslie Spriggs laid there as though he was dead. I believe that John Stradling Thomas said to Joe Harper, "How do we know that he is alive?" So he leaned forward, turned the knob on the heart machine, the green light went around, and he said, "There, you've lost—it's 311.""

Pairing
'Pairing' is an arrangement between two opposing MPs where both agree not to participate in any divisions because their votes would cancel each other out anyway. Pairing agreements can last anything from days to the life of the Parliament. All pairings have to be registered with the party whips so that they know not to pursue their member for failing to vote.

House of Lords

In the House of Lords, the Lord Speaker proposes the question and announces the result as in the Commons, but substitutes "Content" for "Aye" and "Not-content" for "No". A Lord may object to the Lord Speaker's determination. The Lord Speaker then announces a division by stating, "Clear the Bar!" The Bar of the House is then cleared. Tellers are appointed as in the Commons.

Three minutes after the question was first proposed, the Lord Speaker again proposes the question as above. If his opinion is not challenged, then the question is decided without a division. But if his decision is once again disputed, the Lord Speaker may again ask the question. The question may be repeated as many times as the Lord Speaker pleases; the process is referred to as "collecting the voices". But if a single Lord maintains an objection, the Lord Speaker, not having the Commons Speaker's power to declare a division unnecessary, must eventually announce, "The Contents to the right by the Throne, the Not-contents to the left by the Bar". Lords then vote in the lobbies, as it is done in the Commons. Unlike the Speaker, the Lord Speaker may vote during a division; he does so from his seat rather than in a lobby. In the event that the votes are equal, then the following principles apply, but are implemented by the Standing Orders of the House rather than by convention:

 * Legislation remains unchanged unless there is a majority in favour of amendment,
 * Legislation is allowed to proceed to the next stage unless there is a majority in favour of rejection, and
 * All other motions are rejected unless there is a majority in favour of passage.

The quorum for divisions is three Lords on a procedural vote and thirty Lords on a substantive one.

Northern Ireland Assembly
The Northern Ireland Assembly maintains a lobby voting system based on that used in the UK House of Commons, this is in contrast to other devolved legislatures in the United Kingdom and was inherited by the Assembly from the House of Commons of Northern Ireland for whom the current Assembly debating chamber was originally constructed.

When a vote is required the Assembly Speaker will state "The Question is put ..." and then note the question that the members are asked to vote upon. The speaker will then conduct a voice vote and if the result of that vote is not conclusive, the Speaker will declare "The Assembly will divide" and call for the lobbies on either side of the chamber to be cleared of non-members and Tellers appointed for both aye and noe. Members vote by entering the appropriate lobby on either side of the chamber, ayes to the Speaker's right, noes to the Speaker's left, with the result reported to the Speaker by the tellers and announced to the Assembly by the Speaker.

As in the UK House of Commons, it is possible for members to vote in both lobbies, registering two votes that cancel each other out, in order to signify an active abstention

United States
In the United States Congress, divisions are used to give a more accurate estimate of a vote than a voice vote. Typically, a division is taken when the result of a voice vote is challenged or when a two-thirds vote is required.

A division is also called a rising vote, where members stand up from their seats. According to Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (RONR), the numbers for and against are not counted in a division. However, they may be counted by order of the chairman or by order of the assembly through majority vote. The assembly may also have a rule that the division is counted.

Unlike the British Parliament, in Congress, lobbies are not used, and the division is not a final determination of the question. The vote is first taken by voice vote, as is the case in Parliament. Then, any member may demand a division. If a division is demanded, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives (or, more commonly, a Representative of the majority party designated by the Speaker to preside as Speaker pro tempore) or the Presiding Officer of the Senate asks those voting Yea to rise and remain standing until counted, and then asks those voting Nay to do the same. A division is the least common method of voting in the Senate.

A recorded vote must take place upon the demand of one-fifth of members present under Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution: "the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal." In the Senate, a recorded vote is accomplished by the clerk's call of the roll. In the House, an electronic voting device is typically used to take recorded votes, although occasionally roll calls take place; the House is historically too large to conduct roll calls on a regular basis (435 members versus 100 in the Senate). When voting to override a Presidential veto, the yeas and nays are required under Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.

title: Division of the assembly


text:
Săliștea

Săliștea (Tschorren; Alsócsóra), known as Cioara until 1965, is a commune located in Alba County, Transylvania, Romania. The old name of Cioara is still widely used, especially by local residents.

It is composed of four villages: Mărgineni, Săliștea, Săliștea-Deal, and Tărtăria (Alsótatárlaka).

Geography
Săliștea is located near the Mureș River in the southwestern part of Alba County. The centre of the commune is situated 5 km north of a main Romanian National Road, namely the DN7, to which is connected by the county road DJ705E. The nearest cities are Sebeș (21 km), Cugir (25 km) and the county capital, Alba Iulia (27 km).

The bordering communes are Blandiana in the north, Vințu de Jos in the north-east, Pianu in the east, the town of Cugir in the west and Șibot in the south.

The relief is dominated by the low terraces of the river Mureș in the north and the high plateau and several hills in the south. The highest hills, Globul, Hălmul and Coasta Răchitii, are about 700 – high. Other hills are Văratecul (630 m), Dealul Mare (452 m), Dealul Ciorii (424 m), Dealul Calului (389 m) and Munceii Rotunzi (341 m).

The mean annual temperatures range between 5 and 9 C.

History

The oldest traces of human activity in Săliștea date back to the Vinča culture of the Middle Neolithic. The Tărtăria tablets dated 5300 BC were discovered in the village of Tărtăria, part of the Săliștea commune, in 1961 by a team of Romanian archaeologists led by Nicolae Vlassa.

Other archaeological findings indicate the existence of a Dacian settlement in this area. The main discovery was a series of 62 pieces of silver artifacts, found in 1820 by Matei Molodeț, a villager from Săliștea. Several coins dated back to the times of Roman Dacia were also found by archaeologists.

The first attestation of a village in the area occupied today by Săliștea dates back to 4 November 1310, when by order of king Charles I of Hungary, the village of Archișul Românesc (Romanian Archiș) was donated to Count Reneriu from Vințu de Jos. The other village, Drejman, was attested in a document from 29 June 1375, when by order of king Louis I of Hungary, villa Drasman is inherited by Reneriu's granddaughters.

On 23 May 1458 Archișul Românesc and Drejman were united to form the village of Cioara, named after the stream Cioara, a tributary of river Mureș. It is possible that the stream Cioara was named after the famous inn close to the village of Archișul Românesc and Drejman, that had as an emblem a crow (in Romanian: cioară or corb). The emblem of the inn was also the emblem of the Barcsay noble family from Bârcea Mare, Hunedoara, that was attested in this area in several documents from 1458 and 1462, and became the dominant noble family in Săliștea starting from 1508.

The village of Cioara is linked to Sofronie of Cioara, the Eastern Orthodox Monk and Saint of the Romanian Orthodox Church who, between the autumn of 1759 and the spring of 1761, led the peaceful uprising of the Romanian Orthodox population against the Habsburg policy of encouraging all Romanians to join the Greek-Catholic Church. In 1701, the Emperor Leopold I decreed Transylvania's Orthodox Church to be one with the Roman Catholic Church. Sofronie's peaceful uprising advocated for freedom of worship and the right of the Romanian population in Transylvania to have a Romanian Orthodox bishop. As a response to Sofronie's movement, the Austrian military commander systematically destroyed the monasteries in Transylvania that had served as centres of the uprising, including the one in Cioara. In the end however, The Orthodox achieved a notable victory: recognition by the court of Vienna of the legal existence of their church and the appointment of a bishop in person of Dionisije Novaković.

Several historians also showed the involvement of several villagers from Cioara in the Revolt of Horea, Cloșca and Crișan and the Transylvanian Memorandum movement.

A number of 550 inhabitants of Cioara fought during World War I in the Austro-Hungarian Army and most of them as volunteers in the Romanian Army in the second part of the war. Sixty-five of them were reported dead in action.

On 1 December 1918, the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia proclaimed the Union of Transylvania with Romania. Several people from Cioara took part in the Assembly, including the local priest, Constantin Oancea, who was one of the speakers in the Assembly.

During World War II, more than 250 people from Cioara fought in the Romanian Army, of which 45 died in action. After the war, 65 children from Bessarabia, including their teacher, found refuge in the commune.

The name of the commune was changed in 1965 from Cioara to Săliștea.

Population
According to the 2002 census, there were 2,374 people living in Săliștea (100% Romanians), of which 1,252 in the centre of the commune, 745 in Tărtăria, 309 in Săliștea Deal, and 77 in Mărgineni. At the 2011 census, the population had decreased to 2,197. At the 2021 census, there were 2,155 inhabitants in the commune, of which 2,039 were Romanians.

Natives

 * Mircea Miclea (b. 1963), professor and psychologist
 * David Prodan (1902–1992), historian
 * Sofronie of Cioara, Eastern Orthodox Monk and Saint of the Romanian Orthodox Church

title: Săliștea


text:
User talk:MarieB~enwiki

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Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:MarieB~enwiki


text:
User talk:Twoplus2

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

snoyes 21:19, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Twoplus2


text:
Power of two

A power of two is a number of the form $2^{n}$ where $n$ is an integer, that is, the result of exponentiation with number 2|two as the base and integer $n$ as the exponent.

Powers of two with non-negative exponents are integers: $2^{0} = 1$, $2^{1} = 2$, and $2^{n}$ is two multiplied by itself $n$ times. The first ten powers of 2 for non-negative values of $n$ are:
 * 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, ...

By comparison, powers of two with negative exponents are fractions: for a negative integer $n$, $2^{n}$ is one half multiplied by itself $n$ times. Thus the first few powers of two where $n$ is negative are $1⁄2$, $1⁄4$, $1⁄8$, $1⁄16$, etc. Sometimes these are called inverse powers of two because each is the multiplicative inverse of a positive power of two.

Base of the binary numeral system
Because two is the base of the binary numeral system, powers of two are common in computer science. Written in binary, a power of two always has the form 100...000 or 0.00...001, just like a power of 10 in the decimal system.

Computer science
Two to the exponent of $n$, written as $2^{n}$, is the number of ways the bits in a binary word of length $n$ can be arranged. A word, interpreted as an unsigned integer, can represent values from 0 ($000...000_{2}$) to $2^{n} − 1$ ($111...111_{2}$) inclusively. Corresponding signed integer values can be positive, negative and zero; see signed number representations. Either way, one less than a power of two is often the upper bound of an integer in binary computers. As a consequence, numbers of this form show up frequently in computer software. As an example, a video game running on an 8-bit system might limit the score or the number of items the player can hold to 255—the result of using a byte, which is 8 bits long, to store the number, giving a maximum value of $2^{8} − 1 = 255$. For example, in the original Legend of Zelda the main character was limited to carrying 255 rupees (the currency of the game) at any given time, and the video game Pac-Man famously has a kill screen at level 256.

Powers of two are often used to measure computer memory. A byte is now considered eight bits (an octet), resulting in the possibility of 256 values (28). (The term byte once meant (and in some cases, still means) a collection of bits, typically of 5 to 32 bits, rather than only an 8-bit unit.) The prefix kilo, in conjunction with byte, may be, and has traditionally been, used, to mean 1,024 (210). However, in general, the term kilo has been used in the International System of Units to mean 1,000 (103). Binary prefixes have been standardized, such as kibi (Ki) meaning 1,024. Nearly all processor registers have sizes that are powers of two, 32 or 64 being very common.

Powers of two occur in a range of other places as well. For many disk drives, at least one of the sector size, number of sectors per track, and number of tracks per surface is a power of two. The logical block size is almost always a power of two.

Numbers that are not powers of two occur in a number of situations, such as video resolutions, but they are often the sum or product of only two or three powers of two, or powers of two minus one. For example, $640 = 32 × 20$, and $480 = 32 × 15$. Put another way, they have fairly regular bit patterns.

Mersenne and Fermat primes
A prime number that is one less than a power of two is called a Mersenne prime. For example, the prime number 31 is a Mersenne prime because it is 1 less than 32 (25). Similarly, a prime number (like 257) that is one more than a positive power of two is called a Fermat prime—the exponent itself is a power of two. A fraction that has a power of two as its denominator is called a dyadic rational. The numbers that can be represented as sums of consecutive positive integers are called polite numbers; they are exactly the numbers that are not powers of two.

Euclid's Elements, Book IX
The geometric progression 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... (or, in the binary numeral system, 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, ... ) is important in number theory. Book IX, Proposition 36 of Elements proves that if the sum of the first $n$ terms of this progression is a prime number (and thus is a Mersenne prime as mentioned above), then this sum times the $n$th term is a perfect number. For example, the sum of the first 5 terms of the series 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 = 31, which is a prime number. The sum 31 multiplied by 16 (the 5th term in the series) equals 496, which is a perfect number.

Book IX, Proposition 35, proves that in a geometric series if the first term is subtracted from the second and last term in the sequence, then as the excess of the second is to the first—so is the excess of the last to all those before it. (This is a restatement of our formula for geometric series from above.) Applying this to the geometric progression 31, 62, 124, 248, 496 (which results from 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 by multiplying all terms by 31), we see that 62 minus 31 is to 31 as 496 minus 31 is to the sum of 31, 62, 124, 248. Therefore, the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124 and 248 add up to 496 and further these are all the numbers that divide 496. For suppose that $p$ divides 496 and it is not amongst these numbers. Assume $p q$ is equal to $16 × 31$, or 31 is to $q$ as $p$ is to 16. Now $p$ cannot divide 16 or it would be amongst the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16. Therefore, 31 cannot divide $q$. And since 31 does not divide $q$ and $q$ measures 496, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic implies that $q$ must divide 16 and be among the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16. Let $q$ be 4, then $p$ must be 124, which is impossible since by hypothesis $p$ is not amongst the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124 or 248.

Last digits
Starting with 2 the last digit is periodic with period 4, with the cycle 2–4–8–6–, and starting with 4 the last two digits are periodic with period 20. These patterns are generally true of any power, with respect to any base. The pattern continues where each pattern has starting point $2^{n}$, and the period is the multiplicative order of 2 modulo $2^{n}$, which is $2^{n}$ (see Multiplicative group of integers modulo n).

Powers of 1024
The first few powers of 210 are slightly larger than those same powers of 1000 (103). The powers of 210 values that have less than 27% deviation are listed below: It takes approximately 17 powers of 1024 to reach 50% deviation and approximately 29 powers of 1024 to reach 100% deviation of the same powers of 1000. Also see Binary prefixes and IEEE 1541-2002.

Powers of two whose exponents are powers of two
Because data (specifically integers) and the addresses of data are stored using the same hardware, and the data is stored in one or more octets ($2^{n}$), double exponentials of two are common. The first 20 of them are:

Also see Fermat number, tetration and lower hyperoperations.

Last digits for powers of two whose exponents are powers of two
All of these numbers end in 6. Starting with 16 the last two digits are periodic with period 4, with the cycle 16–56–36–96–, and starting with 16 the last three digits are periodic with period 20. These patterns are generally true of any power, with respect to any base. The pattern continues where each pattern has starting point $2^{k}$, and the period is the multiplicative order of 2 modulo $5^{k}$, which is $φ(5^{k}) = 4 × 5^{k−1}$ (see Multiplicative group of integers modulo n).

Facts about powers of two whose exponents are powers of two
In a connection with nimbers, these numbers are often called Fermat 2-powers.

The numbers $$2^{2^n}$$ form an irrationality sequence: for every sequence $$x_i$$ of positive integers, the series
 * $$\sum_{i=0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{2^{2^i} x_i} = \frac{1}{2x_0}+\frac{1}{4x_1}+\frac{1}{16x_2}+\cdots$$

converges to an irrational number. Despite the rapid growth of this sequence, it is the slowest-growing irrationality sequence known.

Powers of two whose exponents are powers of two in computer science
Since it is common for computer data types to have a size which is a power of two, these numbers count the number of representable values of that type. For example, a 32-bit word consisting of 4 bytes can represent $2^{3}$ distinct values, which can either be regarded as mere bit-patterns, or are more commonly interpreted as the unsigned numbers from 0 to $2^{n}$, or as the range of signed numbers between $2^{2^{n}}|undefined$ and $2^{k}$. For more about representing signed numbers see two's complement.

Selected powers of two

 * 22 = 4
 * The number that is the square of two. Also the first power of two tetration of two.

 * 28 = 256
 * The number of values represented by the 8 bits in a byte, more specifically termed as an octet. (The term byte is often defined as a collection of bits rather than the strict definition of an 8-bit quantity, as demonstrated by the term kilobyte.)

 * 210 = 1,024
 * The binary approximation of the kilo-, or 1,000 multiplier, which causes a change of prefix. For example: 1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (or kibibyte).

 * 212 = 4,096
 * The hardware page size of an Intel x86-compatible processor.

 * 215 = 32,768
 * The number of non-negative values for a signed 16-bit integer.

 * 216 = 65,536

 * The number of distinct values representable in a single word on a 16-bit processor, such as the original x86 processors.
 * The maximum range of a short integer variable in the C#, Java, and SQL programming languages. The maximum range of a Word or Smallint variable in the Pascal programming language.
 * The number of binary relations on a 4-element set.

 * 220 = 1,048,576
 * The binary approximation of the mega-, or 1,000,000 multiplier, which causes a change of prefix. For example: 1,048,576 bytes = 1 megabyte (or mebibyte).

 * 224 = 16,777,216
 * The number of unique colors that can be displayed in truecolor, which is used by common computer monitors.
 * This number is the result of using the three-channel RGB system, where colors are defined by three values (red, green and blue) independently ranging from 0 to 255  inclusive. This gives 8 bits for each channel, or 24 bits in total; for example, pure black is , pure white is  . The space of all possible colors, 16,777,216, can be determined by 166 (6 digits with 16 possible values for each), 2563 (3 channels with 256 possible values for each), or 224 (24 bits with 2 possible values for each).
 * The size of the largest unsigned integer or address in computers with 24-bit registers or data buses.

 * 230 = 1,073,741,824
 * The binary approximation of the giga-, or 1,000,000,000 multiplier, which causes a change of prefix. For example, 1,073,741,824 bytes = 1 gigabyte (or gibibyte).

 * 231 = 2,147,483,648

 * The number of non-negative values for a signed 32-bit integer. Since Unix time is measured in seconds since January 1, 1970, it will run out at 2,147,483,647 seconds or 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038 on 32-bit computers running Unix, a problem known as the year 2038 problem.

 * 232 = 4,294,967,296

 * The number of distinct values representable in a single word on a 32-bit processor. Or, the number of values representable in a doubleword on a 16-bit processor, such as the original x86 processors.
 * The range of an  variable in the Java, C#, and SQL programming languages.
 * The range of a  or   variable in the Pascal programming language.
 * The minimum range of a long integer variable in the C and C++ programming languages.
 * The total number of IP addresses under IPv4. Although this is a seemingly large number, the number of available 32-bit IPv4 addresses has been exhausted (but not for IPv6 addresses).
 * The number of binary operations with domain equal to any 4-element set, such as GF(4).

 * 240 = 1,099,511,627,776
 * The binary approximation of the tera-, or 1,000,000,000,000 multiplier, which causes a change of prefix. For example, 1,099,511,627,776 bytes = 1 terabyte or tebibyte.

 * 250 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
 * The binary approximation of the peta-, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 multiplier. 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes = 1 petabyte or pebibyte.

 * 253 = 9,007,199,254,740,992
 * The number until which all integer values can exactly be represented in IEEE double precision floating-point format. Also the first power of 2 to start with the digit 9 in decimal.

 * 256 = 72,057,594,037,927,936
 * The number of different possible keys in the obsolete 56 bit DES symmetric cipher.

 * 260 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
 * The binary approximation of the exa-, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 multiplier. 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes = 1 exabyte or exbibyte.

 * 263 = 9,223,372,036,854,775,808
 * The number of non-negative values for a signed 64-bit integer.
 * 263 − 1, a common maximum value (equivalently the number of positive values) for a signed 64-bit integer in programming languages.

 * 264 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
 * The number of distinct values representable in a single word on a 64-bit processor. Or, the number of values representable in a doubleword on a 32-bit processor. Or, the number of values representable in a quadword on a 16-bit processor, such as the original x86 processors.
 * The range of a long variable in the Java and C# programming languages.
 * The range of a Int64 or QWord variable in the Pascal programming language.
 * The total number of IPv6 addresses generally given to a single LAN or subnet.
 * 264 − 1, the number of grains of rice on a chessboard, according to the old story, where the first square contains one grain of rice and each succeeding square twice as many as the previous square. For this reason the number is sometimes known as the "chess number".
 * 264 − 1 is also the number of moves required to complete the legendary 64-disk version of the Tower of Hanoi.

 * 268 = 295,147,905,179,352,825,856
 * The first power of 2 to contain all decimal digits.

 * 270 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
 * The binary approximation of the zetta-, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 multiplier. 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424 bytes = 1 zettabyte (or zebibyte).

 * 280 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176
 * The binary approximation of the yotta-, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 multiplier. 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes = 1 yottabyte (or yobibyte).

 * 286 = 77,371,252,455,336,267,181,195,264
 * 286 is conjectured to be the largest power of two not containing a zero in decimal.

 * 296 = 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336
 * The total number of IPv6 addresses generally given to a local Internet registry. In CIDR notation, ISPs are given a, which means that 128-32=96 bits are available for addresses (as opposed to network designation). Thus, 296 addresses.

 * 2108 = 324,518,553,658,426,726,783,156,020,576,256
 * The largest known power of 2 not containing a 9 in decimal.

 * 2126 = 85,070,591,730,234,615,865,843,651,857,942,052,864
 * The largest known power of 2 not containing a pair of consecutive equal digits.

 * 2128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
 * The total number of IP addresses available under IPv6. Also the number of distinct universally unique identifiers (UUIDs).

 * 2168 = 374,144,419,156,711,147,060,143,317,175,368,453,031,918,731,001,856
 * The largest known power of 2 not containing all decimal digits (the digit 2 is missing in this case).

 * 2192 = 6,277,101,735,386,680,763,835,789,423,207,666,416,102,355,444,464,034,512,896
 * The total number of different possible keys in the AES 192-bit key space (symmetric cipher).

 * 2229 = 862,718,293,348,820,473,429,344,482,784,628,181,556,388,621,521,298,319,395,315,527,974,912
 * 2229 is the largest known power of two containing the least number of zeros relative to its power. It is conjectured by Metin Sariyar that every digit 0 to 9 is inclined to appear an equal number of times in the decimal expansion of power of two as the power increases.

 * 2256 = 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936
 * The total number of different possible keys in the AES 256-bit key space (symmetric cipher).

 * 21,024 = 1.79*10308
 * The maximum number that can fit in a 64-bit IEEE double-precision floating-point format (hence the maximum number that can be represented by many programs, for example Microsoft Excel).

 * 216,384 = 1.19*104,932
 * The maximum number that can fit in a 128-bit IEEE quadruple-precision floating-point format

 * 2262,144 = 1.61*1078,913
 * The maximum number that can fit in a 256-bit IEEE octuple-precision floating-point format

 * 282,589,933 = 1.49*1024,862,047
 * One more than the largest known prime number.

Powers of two in music theory
In musical notation, all unmodified note values have a duration equal to a whole note divided by a power of two; for example a half note (1/2), a quarter note (1/4), an eighth note (1/8) and a sixteenth note (1/16). Dotted or otherwise modified notes have other durations. In time signatures the lower numeral, the beat unit, which can be seen as the denominator of a fraction, is almost always a power of two.

If the ratio of frequencies of two pitches is a power of two, then the interval between those pitches is full octaves. In this case, the corresponding notes have the same name.

The mathematical coincidence $$2^{7} \approx (\tfrac{3}{2})^{12}$$, from $$\frac{\log3}{\log2} = 1.5849\ldots \approx \frac{19}{12}$$, closely relates the interval of 7 semitones in equal temperament to a perfect fifth of just intonation: $$2^{7/12}\approx 3/2$$, correct to about 0.1%. The just fifth is the basis of Pythagorean tuning; the difference between twelve just fifths and seven octaves is the Pythagorean comma.

Other properties
The sum of all $n$-choose binomial coefficients is equal to $5^{k}$. Consider the set of all $n$-digit binary integers. Its cardinality is $φ(5^{k}) = 4 × 5^{k−1}$. It is also the sums of the cardinalities of certain subsets: the subset of integers with no 1s (consisting of a single number, written as $n$ 0s), the subset with a single 1, the subset with two 1s, and so on up to the subset with $n$ 1s (consisting of the number written as $n$ 1s). Each of these is in turn equal to the binomial coefficient indexed by $n$ and the number of 1s being considered (for example, there are 10-choose-3 binary numbers with ten digits that include exactly three 1s).

Currently, powers of two are the only known almost perfect numbers.

The cardinality of the power set of a set $2^{32}$ is always $2^{32} − 1$, where $−2^{31}$ is the cardinality of $2^{31} − 1$.

The number of vertices of an $n$-dimensional hypercube is $2^{n}$. Similarly, the number of $2^{n}$-faces of an $n$-dimensional cross-polytope is also $a$ and the formula for the number of $n$-faces an $n$-dimensional cross-polytope has is $$2^x \tbinom{n}{x}.$$

The sum of the first $$n$$ powers of two (starting from $$1 = 2^{0}$$) is given by,

 * $$ \sum_{k=0}^{n-1} 2^k = 2^0 + 2^1 + 2^2 + \cdots + 2^{n-1} = 2^{n}-1 $$

for $$n$$ being any positive integer.

Thus, the sum of the powers
 * $$1 + 2^1 + 2^2 + \cdots + 2^{63}$$

can be computed simply by evaluating: $$2^{64}-1$$ (which is the "chess number").

The sum of the reciprocals of the powers of two is 1. The sum of the reciprocals of the squared powers of two (powers of four) is 1/3.

The smallest natural power of two whose decimal representation begins with 7 is
 * $$2^{46} = 70\ 368\ 744\ 177\ 664.$$

Every power of 2 (excluding 1) can be written as the sum of four square numbers in 24 ways. The powers of 2 are the natural numbers greater than 1 that can be written as the sum of four square numbers in the fewest ways.

As a real polynomial, an + bn is irreducible, if and only if n is a power of two. (If n is odd, then an + bn is divisible by a+b, and if n is even but not a power of 2, then n can be written as n=mp, where m is odd, and thus $$a^n + b^n = (a^p)^m + (b^p)^m$$, which is divisible by ap + bp.) But in the domain of complex numbers, the polynomial $$a^{2n} + b^{2n}$$ (where n>=1) can always be factorized as $$a^{2n} + b^{2n} = (a^n + b^ni) \cdot (a^n - b^ni)$$, even if n is a power of two.

Negative powers of two
Huffman codes deliver optimal lossless data compression when probabilities of the source symbols are all negative powers of two.

title: Power of two