Connor Balthazor, 17, was in the middle of study hall when he was called into a meeting with his high school newspaper adviser. A group of reporters and editors from the student newspaper, the Booster Redux at Pittsburg High School in southeastern Kansas, had gathered to talk about Amy Robertson, who was recently hired as the high school’s head principal. 

  The student journalists had begun researching Robertson, and quickly found some discrepancies in her education credentials. For one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university where Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees years ago, the website didn’t work. They found no evidence that it was an accredited university. “There were some things that just didn’t quite add up,” Balthazor told The Washington Post. The students began digging into a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published questioning the legitimacy of the principal’s degrees and of her work as an education consultant. A few days after the release of the report, Robertson resigned. 

  “In light of the issues that arose, Dr. Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position,” Pittsburg Community Schools announced in a statement. The resignation thrust the student newspaper staff into local, state, and national news, with professional journalists nationwide applauding the students for asking tough questions and prompting change in their administration. “Everybody kept telling them, ‘stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong,'” newspaper adviser Emily Smith told The Post. But with the encouragement of the superintendent, the students persisted. “They were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults,” Smith said. “We’d broken out of our comfort zones so much,” Balthazor said. “To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great moment for us.”           After graduation, Balthazor said, he hopes to pursue a degree in creative writing or filmmaking. Even though he doesn’t necessarily plan to stick with journalism, Balthazor said the past few weeks had been “surreal.” “Most high schoolers would never get even close to an opportunity to get to experience something like this,” he said.

   The destructive power of fungi is impressive. They are a major cause of structural damage to building timbers, a cause of diseases in animals and humans, and one of the greatest cause of agricultural losses. Entire crops can be wiped out by fungal attacks both before and after harvesting. Some fungi can grow at +50C, while others can grow at -5C, so even food in cold storage may not be completely safe from them. On the other hand, fungi bring about the decomposition of dead organic matter, thus enriching the soil and returning carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. They also enter into a number of mutually beneficial relationship with plants and other organisms. In addition, fungi are the source of many of the most potent antibiotics used in clinical medicine including penicillin.

  The European lead is striking. According to recent statistics, Americans have an average of just two weeks off each year. In Europe, by contrast, at least a month of paid vacation is viewed as an inalienable right. The Italians get 42 days of holiday a year; the French, 37 and the Germans, 35.            Even the British, with their more American business culture, still take an average of 28 days off a year. In August, the height of the holiday season, much of Europe simply closes down. There is simply no point in trying to get anyone to do any work. Taking a long summer holiday is so crucial to European self-esteem that a survey showed that more than a third of Italians who stay at home during the extended time off intended to pretend that they were going away. Considerable numbers were prepared to buy tanning machines and to take the pets to the neighbors to maintain appearances.          Naturally, people’s inclination for taking longer holidays represents a mammoth business opportunity for the tourism and travel industry, by some measures, the world’s largest industry. Figures from the World Tourism Organization suggest that most international tourists travel to or within Europe, giving Europe a 58% share of the world tourism market. Of the top eight destinations, five are in Europe; France tops the list, followed by Spain, the United States and Italy. 

   These figures, however, may mislead. Some 80% of vacationers within the European Union are from other parts of the EU. France’s top place owes much to the country’s inherent attractions but also quite a lot to its geographical position. Every Dutch or Belgian caravan thundering through France towards the beaches of Spain adds to the figure of foreign visitors to France.

    Still, there is no doubt about the economic weight of tourism in Europe. Indeed, any sign that the flow of tourists is slowing is greeted with neurotic headlines. Yet while Europe cannot live without tourists, it sometimes finds it hard to live with them. The city authorities in Venice are so fed up with some visitors’ behavior that they have just announced a list of 10 offences for which they will impose on-the-spot fines. Improprieties including walking around bare-chested and bathing in fountains, even in the torrid summer, are on the list. Spaniards and Greeks find the hordes of riotous, boozy young Britons that descend on them each summer a mixed blessing. 

   Such excesses of mass tourism will certainly do nothing to puncture Europe’s love affair with the long holiday. Those unfortunate souls charged with managing the European economy are having to factor holidays into their thinking. Analysis has shown that a large part of the wealth gap per head between Europeans and Americans could be attributed to Europeans’ preference for taking longer holidays. The figures certainly show that when they are actually in their offices, the Germans, French and Dutch (though not the British) are more productive than Americans. 

   But not everyone is as sanguine about this state of affairs. Hopeful talk by some European politicians of building up the European Union as a new superpower is likely to prove vain so long as the EU’s economic growth lags so markedly behind that of the United States—not to mention China’s. Germany’s labor minister recently caused a stir by arguing that Germans ought to work more and take less holidays. Some of his countrymen may even be taking these strictures to heart. 

   Germans traditionally take more foreign holidays per head than all other Europeans, but this year, German travel agents say that bookings are substantially down. Some attribute this to a new mood of economic insecurity. Perhaps there is a selfcorrecting mechanism in Europeans’ taste for leisure over work. If the measures were taken too far, might the economy slow down so much that people no longer feel secure or rich enough to take the usual five weeks off?

Although voting rights have steadily expanded in the United States, the numbers of people who vote have been steadily decreasing. Even in presidential elections, half the potential electorate stays home. In fact, lower percentages of registered voters now vote in the United States than in any other industrialized democracy. After the election, some editorialists criticize the nonvoters for being lazy, while others criticize the candidates for being uninspiring－but the question of why eligible voters abstain is more complicated than newspaper editorials usually suggest. 

 Voting is dear. If you are paid by the hour and you take time off in order to vote, you lose a portion of your wages. Otherwise, you may have to wait in long lines to be able to vote before or after work. If you are a parent who cares for small children, you may need to pay the cost of a sitter. Even if you are a professional who can leave work early or arrive late, you may do less work on Election Day if you take the time to vote. Moreover, not all costs are tangible. The time you spend at the voting precinct is time that you may not spend on other activities, some of which may seem more fulfilling. For some people with little information about politics, the entire voting situation can be uncomfortable; staying home enables them to avoid the discomfort. If you are surprised that such seemingly small considerations could lower turnout, consider that turnout generally falls when the weather is rainy or very hot. 

There also are benefits to voting, of course. The most obvious is likely the least important: the possibility that your vote might swing an election. Your vote affects an electoral outcome only if it creates or breaks a tie. 

 Otherwise, you could stay home and the election would come out the same way. The chance that a single voter will swing a state or national election is very low, even when turnout falls to its lowest levels. In the 1996 presidential election, which attracted the lowest turnout rate of any presidential election in the twentieth century, almost 100 million Americans voted. In the 1998 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, which featured the lowest midterm  election turnout in half a century, an average of 140,000 citizens voted in each congressional race. Given numbers like these, a desire to determine who wins the election cannot be a very powerful individual motivation for turning out. From a purely practical standpoint, the puzzle is not that turnout is so low in the United States but, rather, that turnout is as high as it is. 

Late in the nineteenth century, when turnout levels were especially high－well over 75 percent outside the South－some voters had a compelling reason to show up at the polls: They were paid to do so. Historians estimate that the going price of a vote in New York City elections could soar as high as $25 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation. 

 Material rewards are a much rarer benefit of voting today, but sop for voting still exists here and there, mainly in the poorer areas of eastern cities. Citizens also may feel compelled to vote in elections because the outcome can directly affect their material interests. For example, government employees vote at higher rates than people employed in the private sector, other things being equal－especially in low-turnout local elections. Today, however, most of the individual motivations for voting are not material but psychological. For example, some people feel a civic duty to vote. They avoid guilt by showing up at the polls. Americans are highly individualistic, though, so they are not especially prone to place much emphasis on civic duty. Perhaps the most compelling benefit of voting is the pleasure it can bring. Some Americans take satisfaction in expressing their preference for a candidate or an issue position, much as they might enjoy cheering for an athletic team. Psychological benefits are an important incentive for voting. Whereas your vote makes no difference unless it affects the outcome, you receive the psychological benefits regardless of the closeness of an election. Indeed, voters may take even more satisfaction when they can be part of a political team that wins big, much as sports teams gain in popularity when they enjoy a particularly good season. Another reason people vote goes beyond simple individual motivations. Sometimes people participate in elections because they have been encouraged to vote by others who have personal incentives to increase turnout. Voter mobilization consists of the efforts of parties, groups, and activists to canvass for their candidate. Campaign workers provide baby sitters and rides to the polls, thus reducing the individual costs of voting. They apply social pressure by contacting citizens who haven’t voted and reminding them to do so. Various groups and social networks to which individuals belong also exert social pressures, encouraging the feeling that one has a responsibility to vote. Although pressures and benefits like these may seem small, remember that the costs of voting are relatively small as well.