Free Republic

By David BurgeIowaHawk Blog | May 17, 2005Cambridge, MA - Two years ago [in March], Alan Lowenstein, associate professor of philosophy at Harvard University, came to a fateful conclusion. "I suddenly realized that the oppression of western technology extended to my own life," he explained. "That's when I got rid of my computer, threw away my Brooks Brothers suits, changed my name to Grok and moved into a cave."A passionate critic of Euro-American "linear thought," Grok is one of a growing number of college professors around the nation who have relocated to caves, mud huts and makeshift sweat lodges...

LONDON - A porcelain urinal is the most influential work of modern art, according to a survey released Wednesday. The poll of 500 arts figures ranked French surrealist Marcel Duchamp's 1917 piece "Fountain" — an ordinary white, porcelain urinal — more influential than Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's searing depiction of the devastation of war. Duchamp pioneered the use of everyday objects as art, an aesthetic that questioned the nature of art itself. Art expert Simon Wilson said the choice of Duchamp's urinal "comes as a bit of a shock."...