Even More Cultural Contusions and Confusions:

Painting with oils was taking place in what is now Afghanistan centuries before such techniques were known to Europeans, researchers say.

French-based scientists have been investigating cave paintings at the ancient complex of Bamiyan.

Until 2001 two vast 6th-Century Buddhas stood at Bamiyan. Then they were blown up by Afghanistan's then-Taleban government as un-Islamic.

Now a team from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble has painstakingly analysed the ancient paintings in those caves.

They say that in 12 caves 7th-Century wall-paintings were created using oil paint, derived possibly from walnuts or the poppies which grew in the area.

It is believed oil painting in Europe began only some six centuries after this. The findings suggest these may be the oldest known examples anywhere of painting with oil. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7361994.stm>

Dan Dare 'inspired UK innovation'

By Andrew Webb
Technology reporter, BBC News

The Science Museum's Ben Russell and John Liffen on technology that reflects on the ideals of the comic hero. Dan Dare images courtesy of Dan Dare Corporation.

Classic comic hero Dan Dare fired the imagination of young Britons in the 1950s and heralded the birth of hi-tech Britain, an exhibition at the London Science Museum reveals.

A British-built nuclear bomb and a prototype of the BT Tower are on display as part of the show.

The museum says the Eagle comic's space hero not only reflected but influenced the UK's wealth of inventions during the 1950s and 60s.

Portable televisions and radio alarm clocks are among the collection, capturing the upbeat spirit of Eagle.

The character Flamer was based on Peter Hampson, son of Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson. Courtesy of Dan Dare Corporation.

"Dan was packed full of... very credible technology that was in there in very minute detail", Peter Hampson, the son of Dan Dare's creator, Frank Hampson, told BBC News.

He said it enabled children to be inspired by science.

Nuclear arsenal

But nuclear weaponry highlights the more sinister and less well known aspect of British research in the 1950s.

Science Museum curator Ben Russell said the government emphasised the benefits of nuclear power, but in reality built reactors to ensure the country could create its own atomic bombs.

In later years the technology's domestic uses became more prominent.

He said: "What Dan Dare was doing depended on the innovation and industry that was happening in Britain at the time. There was enormous drive to modernise and maximise output.

"The whole point of Dan Dare was that is was supposed to be very positive about technology. Unfortunately, in real life things were not quite as Frank Hampson might have hoped." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7376571.stm>

I have always dreamt of spending time on the Congo River. I have flown over it, sat beside it and washed in it. I even once, in a rash moment, drank some of it.

So when an opportunity came to do so, to actually take a boat on this source of so many myths and stories and - yes - cliches, I did not hesitate.

I had read the history books and hired a motorised canoe. The only other thing I really needed was a pith helmet.

Actually, and perhaps surprisingly, this colonial accoutrement is quite easy to find in the Congolese capital Kinshasa because the strange, pointed Victorian-style headgear is, today, a sort of ironic high fashion accessory in the city's top discotheques. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7392167.stm>

Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said winning the prestigious award in 2007 had been a "bloody disaster".

The increased media interest in her has meant that writing a full novel was next to impossible, she told Radio 4's Front Row.

Lessing, 88, also said she would probably now be giving up writing novels altogether.

Speaking about her writing, she said: "It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more.

"This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever.

"Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole."

Lessing is the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history.

Her gold-painted, glass sugar bowl with strips of material sprouting from the top symbolises the corrupt nature of marriage, she says.

When you lift the sugar bowl's lid, you see that the ends of the material are burnt and there are pieces of a broken mirror and bangles.

"When a woman gets married and moves into her husband's home, her life is ruined, her heart broken and she slowly wastes away."

Welcome to just one of the entries for Afghanistan's first contemporary art prize.

Sponsored by the Turquoise Mountain - a foundation dedicated to supporting local Afghan arts and crafts - and a local businessman, the prize aims to support the small contemporary art scene in the country.

More than 70 people from across Afghanistan submitted entries for the $2,000 prize and 10 artists - including Miss Nabil - were shortlisted.

"Art is an important communicator and reflects what's going on in society," said Jemima Montagu, one of the organisers of the prize.

"I think it's important that Afghanistan isn't just a place of trauma but that it's a place where a cultural life can begin to develop like another city."

Other successful entries by Afghan artists include a beaded snake in a glass jar; a pink rose whose stem is pierced by pins; and a wooden lampshade in the shape of Afghanistan and painted in the colours of the national flag.

Mohammad Ismael Zadran, 33, was so excited when he heard the radio advertisement for the prize that he hired a taxi and packed it full of 200 pieces of art.

From his small, conservative village in the north-eastern province of Khost - where he is the only artist - he made the eight-hour bumpy journey.

"Three of my wood sculptures were destroyed during the journey," said Mr Zadran. "But it was a chance I had to take."

Contemporary art in Afghanistan is far removed from the world of contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

"Contemporary art is difficult for most Afghans to understand," said Timor Hakimyar, a former president of the Artists Union of Afghanistan.

You probably know he was an American aviator. He achieved overnight world stardom when he became the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic in 1927.

You might also know that Lindbergh was a peace activist who opposed American involvement in World War II - until Pearl Harbor, after which he volunteered to fly combat missions in the Pacific.

And you might know that in later life he became a prolific author, an explorer and an environmentalist.

But did you know that he was also a machine-obsessed inventor, who entered into a macabre alliance with a French-born surgeon to try to achieve immortality?

Forget aviation hero. On the side, Lindbergh was a Dr Frankenstein figure, who used his mechanical genius to explore the possibility of conquering death - but only for the select few who were considered "worthy" of living forever.

"Beating death was something he thought about his entire life", says David M Friedman, American author of the new book The Immortalists. "Even as a small child, he couldn't accept that people had to die. He would ask: 'Why do you have to die to get to heaven?'"

Friedman's The Immortalists relates the untold story of Lindbergh's frequently bizarre efforts to cheat death by creating machines that might sustain human life.

In the 1930s, after his historic flight over the Atlantic, Lindbergh hooked up with Alexis Carrel, a brilliant surgeon born in France but who worked in a laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute in Manhattan. Carrel - who was a mystic as well as a scientist - had already won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the transplantation of blood vessels. But his real dream was a future in which the human body would become, in Friedman's words, "a machine with constantly reparable or replaceable parts".

This is where Lindbergh entered the frame. Carrel hoped that his own scientific nous combined with Lindbergh's machine-making proficiency (Lindbergh had, after all, already built a plane that flew non-stop to Paris) would make his fantasy about immortal machine-enabled human beings a reality.

"Both of their needs were met in this rather strange relationship", says Friedman. "Carrel benefited from Lindbergh's mechanical genius and inventiveness, and for Lindbergh - well, Carrel became the most important person in his life, effectively steering the way he viewed the world and the people who lived in it."

At the Rockefeller lab, Lindbergh and Carrel - almost like a real-life Jekyll and Hyde double act - made some extraordinary breakthroughs.

Lindbergh created something that Carrel's team had singularly failed to: a perfusion pump that could keep a human organ alive outside of the body. It was called the "Model T" pump. In later years, Lindbergh's pump was further developed by others, eventually leading to the construction of the first heart-lung machine. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7420026.stm>

Forty-two-year-old Sohan Singh is delighted to call himself a "full-fledged" Hindu.

Recently he cremated his mother, defying a family tradition of burying their dead.

Mr Singh is a member of the Kathat community in Rajasthan and follows what his community believes is a pledge undertaken by their forefathers.

Legend has it that the Mehrat, Kathat and Cheeta communities - with a combined total of one million people in four districts of central Rajasthan - are the descendants of the Hindu ruler of the warrior caste, Prithviraj Chauhan.

The three communities also have strong Islamic connections, because many centuries ago, their forefathers undertook a pledge to follow three Muslim practices.

These include the circumcision for the newborn male children in the community, eating halal meat and burying their dead.

That is the tradition many have followed, keeping the word of their ancestors. But it has also led to them facing something of a faith-based identity crisis. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7473019.stm>

Residents of Norway's Svalbard Islands are used to dealing with the dangers of polar bears but, for one remote settlement, wild animals are not the only worry.

Should you have the misfortune to fall gravely ill, you can expect to be despatched by aeroplane or ship to another part of Norway to end your days.

And if you are terminally unlucky and succumb to misfortune or disease, no-one will bury you here.

The town's small graveyard stopped accepting newcomers 70 years ago, after it was discovered that the bodies were failing to decompose.

Corpses preserved by permafrost have since become objects of morbid curiosity. Scientists recently removed tissue from a man who did die here. They found traces of the influenza virus which carried him and many others away in an epidemic in 1917.

At 78 degrees north, it lies on the archipelago of Svalbard, a group of islands between Norway's northern coast and the North Pole.

"I want to get married" is a perfectly normal thing to say for a young Egyptian man. But when a girl says it in such a conservative society - let alone writes a book with that title - she is making a political statement.

"Girls are not supposed to be actively seeking something, a girl simply exists for someone to marry or divorce her," says the author of the top-selling book, Ghada Abdelaal. "To say she wants something is seen as impolite."

The book started as a blog, before it was spotted by an Egyptian publisher and printed as a series of comic sketches in which flawed and failed suitors knocking at her parents' door.

A paranoid policeman, a hirsute fundamentalist, a pathological liar and other hilarious caricatures portrayed in sparkling Egyptian vernacular.

The veiled, softly-spoken Abdelaal is a sharp and witty observer of social incongruity in Egypt, a feisty spirit trying to tear up stifling tradition.

She says her target is not Egyptian men but a tradition known as "gawwaz el-salonat" (living room marriage), where a stranger is brought to the family home and the daughter must decide whether to marry him on the basis of this brief encounter.

"People who go for a picnic need to know each other a little longer than that - let alone make a lifelong commitment."

The book's popularity - it is in its third print run with a sitcom in the offing - reflects a widespread anxiety in Egyptian society. More and more young people cannot afford to get married.

Although the book focuses on finding Mr Right, she acknowledges finding an affordable flat remains an almost insurmountable obstacle. Many young people stay engaged for years before they can save up enough money.

"By the time they actually get to live together, they are already tired of each other," says women's rights activist Nihad Abou El Qoumsan. This causes the unusually high rate of divorce among the newlyweds in Egypt, she says.

Such is the impact of property prices on the marriage crisis, a popular talk show has invited engaged couples to join a draw to win a flat.

A new apartment will be given away by a wealthy businessman every day of the fasting and holiday month of Ramadan, in September. Huge numbers have registered.

Some describe it as a social time bomb. Religious customs mean there is no sex before marriage. So how do young people react to this situation?

Sociologist Madeeha al-Safty of the American University in Cairo believes one consequence is sexual harassment of women and rape reaching unprecedented levels in Egypt.

"If you are frustrated, there is the possibility that you take it out [through] violence.

"Some people choose the safer way in moving towards a more religious attitude - not necessarily extremism, but it might reach the point of extremism," she adds.

But anthropologist Hania Sholkamy hesitates to link the problems of sexual harassment and rape to the marriage crisis.

"I don't think people who harass women on the street are necessarily single, or necessarily sexually frustrated. There are many millions of people who are extremely frustrated, but they do not harass women.

Gender disparities is a theme running throughout Abdelaal's book, from the provocative title questioning the women's passive role in a traditional society to the way children are brought up.

"They ask young girls here when they are three or four, who would you marry… they implant the idea your only purpose in life is to get married.

"Even after she goes to school they tell her that a girl's only future is in her husband's home. So what happens when a girl for any reason cannot get married. Should she set fire to herself?" <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7554892.stm>

Even More Cultural Contusions and Confusions:

Oil painting 'originated in East'

Dan Dare 'inspired UK innovation'

Up the Congo without a helmet

Lessing: Nobel win a 'disaster'

Celebrating art in Afghanistan

Lindbergh's deranged quest for immortality

Islam and Hinduism's blurred lines

Why dying is forbidden in the Arctic

Spotlight on Egypt's marriage crisis