Invention

With “The Invention of Lying,’’ the British comic actor Ricky Gervais has come up with a wickedly funny idea for a movie - and then purged the wickedness right out of it. A sharp-edged, cameo-studded fantasy set in an alternate Earth where everyone tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the film explores the power of one little lie that leads to other, bigger lies that ultimately lead to fabricating an entire system of...

CHICAGO - Couch potatoes everywhere can pause and thank Eugene Polley for hours of feet-up channel surfing. His invention, the first wireless television remote, began as a luxury, but with the introduction of hundreds of channels and viewing technologies it has become a necessity. Just ask anyone who has lost a remote. Mr. Polley died of natural causes Sunday at a hospital in a Chicago suburb, said Zenith Electronics spokesman John Taylor. The former Zenith engineer was 96. In 1955, if you wanted to switch channels from "Arthur Godfrey" to "Father Knows Best," you got up...

Reprinted from late editions of yesterday's Globe. The dancers and musicians of Spain's Noche Flamenca vividly capture what makes the pure flamenco style so immediately and viscerally powerful -- that sense of raw, spontaneous invention within a centuries-old tradition unfurling totally in the moment, uncontrived and unfettered. Yet despite the cohesion of convention, the troupe's four dancers display remarkable individuality. Noche Flamenca's star, Soledad Barrio, is an earth goddess.

Couch potatoes everywhere can pause and thank Eugene Polley for hours of feet-up channel surfing. His invention, the first wireless TV remote, began as a luxury, but with the introduction of hundreds of channels and viewing technologies it has become a necessity. Just ask anyone who's lost a remote. Polley died of natural causes Sunday at a suburban Chicago hospital, said Zenith Electronics spokesman John Taylor. The former Zenith engineer was 96. In 1955, if you wanted to switch TV channels from "Arthur Godfrey" to "Father Knows Best," you got up from your chair, walked...

At first glance, the offices of Quirky Inc. appear much like those of any number of Internet start-ups. A mostly young staff of 50 sits in front of computer screens. Bikes, ridden to work, hang from the ceiling. A young visionary sets an eager, nontraditional vibe. The rolling toilet, though, is a clue that Quirky is a bit different. Quirky is an invention website that takes ideas from its online community and makes them into real consumer products. Ben Kaufman, 24, founded the Manhattan-based Quirky two years ago with the aim of making invention accessible.

CHICAGO - Couch potatoes everywhere can pause and thank Eugene Polley for hours of feet-up channel surfing. His invention, the first wireless television remote, began as a luxury, but with the introduction of hundreds of channels and viewing technologies it has become a necessity. Just ask anyone who has lost a remote. Mr. Polley died of natural causes Sunday at a hospital in a Chicago suburb, said Zenith Electronics spokesman John Taylor. The former Zenith engineer was 96. In 1955, if you wanted to switch channels from "Arthur Godfrey"...

The very talented Australian writer Peter Carey is surely the most varied of major contemporary novelists. He has given us an exuberantly magical 19th-century romance, a futuristic fantasy, a gritty story about the art business and an egomaniacal painter, an alternative version of "Great Expectations," and a fictional variation about a real Australian bandit. With growing complexity and enlarging sweep, his most recent novels have told of a young American woman fleeing involvement with a violent radical group to settle in the Australian outback, and, most recently — in a dazzling epic of the...

Couch potatoes everywhere can pause and thank Eugene Polley for hours of feet-up channel surfing. His invention, the first wireless TV remote, began as a luxury, but with the introduction of hundreds of channels and viewing technologies it has become a necessity. Just ask anyone who's lost a remote. Polley died of natural causes Sunday at a suburban Chicago hospital, said Zenith Electronics spokesman John Taylor. The former Zenith engineer was 96. In 1955, if you wanted to switch TV channels from "Arthur Godfrey" to "Father Knows Best," you got up from your chair, walked...

The Lemelson-MIT Program said Wednesday that Ashok Gadgil is the recipient of its $100,000 Award for Global Innovation. Gadgil is honored for his "steady pursuit to blend research, invention, and humanitarianism for broad social impact," the program said. Gadgil is a chair professor of Safe Water and Sanitation at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Blending invention with cultural needs, Gadgil's solutions - from water safety to energy and...

The $4 million Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center, known as M2D2, will officially open at a dedication ceremony from 10 a.m. to noon on Thursday. M2D2, a joint initiative of the University of Massachusetts' Lowell and Worcester campuses, is located on the second floor of Wannalancit Mills, at 600 Suffolk St. The center was developed to help new medical device entrepreneurs bridge the gap from invention to production by providing them with access to researchers and resources, and equipment needed to fund, design, prototype, and test their ideas.

Apparently, California Gov. Jerry Brown forgot to rent "The Social Network. " In an appearance Friday on "CBS This Morning," the California governor said his state is still the land of innovation and where Facebook was invented. He added: "Not in Texas, not in Arizona, not in Manhattan and certainly not, you know, under the White House or the Congress. " But interviewer Charlie Rose pointed out that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others developed the precursor to the iconic social network at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

The very talented Australian writer Peter Carey is surely the most varied of major contemporary novelists. He has given us an exuberantly magical 19th-century romance, a futuristic fantasy, a gritty story about the art business and an egomaniacal painter, an alternative version of "Great Expectations," and a fictional variation about a real Australian bandit. With growing complexity and enlarging sweep, his most recent novels have told of a young American woman fleeing involvement with a violent radical group to settle in the Australian outback, and, most recently — in a dazzling epic of the...

POCANTICO HILLS, N.Y. — The first bite arrived when the waiter set down a wooden rectangle displaying a "picket fence" of upside-down nails, each holding a dolly-size vegetable — a baby carrot, a broccoflower tip, a mini radish, and a tiny wand of fennel. It was close to 7 on a Saturday night in late October and our party of five had just settled into our cocktails in the candlelit dining room of Blue Hill at Stone Barns restaurant 25 miles north of Manhattan. "Just eat them with your fingers," said our waiter, pointing to the petite vegetable centerpiece.

The Lemelson-MIT Program said Wednesday that Ashok Gadgil is the recipient of its $100,000 Award for Global Innovation. Gadgil is honored for his "steady pursuit to blend research, invention, and humanitarianism for broad social impact," the program said. Gadgil is a chair professor of Safe Water and Sanitation at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Blending invention with cultural needs, Gadgil's solutions - from water safety to energy and fuel-efficiency - have collectively helped...

A thousand inventions have gone on display at the world's biggest fair for new gadgets, where even the ribbon-cutting was done by a humanoid robot. Offerings at the fair that opened Wednesday in Geneva included a ball to protect against household electromagnetic waves and a high-tech screen to play simulated golf. Fair officials say 789 exhibitors from 46 countries and 60,000 visitors are expected. The fair's president Jean-Luc Vincent indicated his surprise at the record-level participation given the strength of the Swiss franc and the economic situation throughout...

NEW YORK — Throughout his nearly four-decade career, the revered Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti has employed high-flying farce and trenchant satire that marries the personal with the political, often blurring reality and fiction. He created a media stir with his 2006 film "The Caiman," a savage skewering of controversial Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, released just weeks before the country's general election. So when it was revealed that Moretti was making a film about a fictional pope set inside the hallowed halls of the Vatican, more than a few...

RE "RETHINK the Esplanade" (Metro, Feb. 11): Columnist Adrian Walker writes of the Esplanade that "there isn't enough to do," and that "if you're going to fix the place, why not transform it?" Of course there is enough to do without transforming it. Isn't it enough to contemplate the beauty of the park and its incomparable setting while walking, running, biking, relaxing, reading, listening? No, it's the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, not the Esplanade, that could use more imagination, invention and even transformation.

NEW YORK - Christine Brooke-Rose - an English experimental writer known for wielding words with the ardor of a philologist, the fingers of a prestidigitator, and the appetite of a lexivore, resulting in novels that exhilarated many critics and enervated others - died March 21. She was 89. Her death was announced on the website of her British publisher, Carcanet Press. The location of Ms. Brooke-Rose's death, whether it occurred at her longtime home in the South of France or elsewhere, was unspecified.

For the past decade, Dr. Joseph A. Grocela has tinkered in the basement workshop of his Weston home, coming up with inventions that range from urological devices to a voice box that helps musicians harmonize and improves intonation for the tone deaf. Now he's in a legal fight with the hospital where he practices, Massachusetts General Hospital, and its corporate parent, Partners HealthCare System Inc., over who owns the rights to those creations and others. In a lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Grocela, 47, says he was told by Frances Toneguzzo, the top...