Over in the right-hand sidebar, Seed is pushing a short piece on Laurie Pycroft, a 16-year-old Briton who founded Pro-Test, an organization supporting animal testing. This was all over the UK papers a couple of months ago, and a little Googling turns up a piece by Pycroft himself telling the story of the group's origins.
(Note to Seed overlords: I shouldn't need to Google this stuff. Why not put a link to Pycroft's web site in the web version of the article?)
I have to say, I'm terribly disappointed with what this says about the state of modern youth, particularly in Europe. Doesn't he know he's supposed to be playing video games, drinking beer, and frittering away his afternoons in a cloud of anomie and marijuana smoke?
Sheesh.
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I published the following post on my former blog on June 3rd, but I'm republishing it here because it serves as an great introduction to the inspirational scientific activism currently taking shape in Oxford.
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The split between the pro- and anti-science left is an interesting one. The rise of the post-modernist crowd in the 80's left them as the face of the movement for quite a while. I think the attention that the intelligent design crowd is drawing is putting the spotlight back on this side.
On the side note of Seed magazine not linking enough:
Yes! Exactly what I was thinking. Their stories are frequently waaay too light on the links. Sometimes I don't even waste my time reading articles on their RSS feed 'cause I don't want to have to google around just to get to related and/or source material.
Of course, I could nag them directly...but I thought it might have more authority coming from you...
Uhm, the seed article is also being a little inaccurate in calling him a "high school dropout". He's just not started his A-levels yet...
The normal school leaving age here in the UK is 16 (after GCSEs), any education above that age is optional. I think around 50% of people choose to go further (To A-levels, or equivalent, then to Uni).