What Would Durkheim Do?

In most countries secularism is positively correlated with support for welfare, but does welfare make people more secular? Anthony Gill of the University of Washington says yes; in 2004, he and grad student Erik Lundsgaarde published a paper arguing that welfare provides a substitute for church attendance, making people less likely to attend church.

The full theory goes as follows: in the 19th century, the power of Christian churches came from their ability to provide social services such as charity, education, and health care. As the state started providing the same services without requiring or expecting church attendance, it became less economic for people to attend church, and less economic for church leaders to focus on welfare activities.

Despite my low expectations, Hamas and Fatah did agree on a unity government. Prime Minister Haniyeh submitted his resignation to President Abbas, and a new unity government is expected soon.
The problem, of course, is that the Palestinians are still worried that Western governments will shun them because of Hamas. If they will then they'll be worse than the EU is when it comes to accession criteria, considering that the main reason Hamas is forming a unity government with Fatah is international pressure.
There's a fundamental hypocrisy involved with the treatment of Hamas. The New York Times calls it a radical group, on account of its lack of recognition of Israel. It's certainly not a pacifist party, nor even a terribly good one, but “radical” is somewhat over the top.

Recall from part 1 that a sequence is said to be of Fibonacci type if it's given by the recursion relation a(n + t) = k(t)a(n + t - 1) + k(t - 1)a(n + t - 2) + ... + k1a(n), with set initial conditions on a1, a2, ..., and a(t). Recall also that every such sequence is given by a linear combination of sequences of the form a(n) = (n^k)(r^n), where r is a root of the associated polynomial x^t - k(t)x^(n + t - 1) - ... - k1 = 0 and k is a number between 0 and one less than the multiplicity of r.

A Carnival of Mathematics submission that notes how a convoluted sequence that generates all integers not divisible by 2, 3, or 5 has just enough material that Fibonnaci-type sequences are relevant to to prompt me to write a follow up, showing a few additional properties of those sequences.