New Patents: Internet Alarm Clock, Cooking pasta without water

Is necessity the mother of invention, as the cliche goes? Jared Diamond, in his huge bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that this assertion is quite false. Still, people keep cooking up new and sometimes useful ideas. Primo Bugane of Alpignano, Italy, has a devised a special pot (for which he received a patent) that cooks pasta al dente in the sauce (or the gravy, as Silvio Dante would call it). Mary Smith Dewey of Dallas patented a system (an internet appliance) that downloads real-time information about weather and traffic to help people get to work or appointments on time by adjusting the time an alarm clock rings.