College professor and performance artist Stelarc has been talking about performing an experiment for years, namely, finding a plastic surgeon who would fabricate for him a third ear out of his own flesh. The problem, he said when I spoke to him about it a number of years ago, was finding a plastic surgeon who would have no trouble designing and implanting the prosthesis, when in fact plastic surgeons make all sorts of modifications to people every day, such as increasing and decreasing the sizes of breasts.

He's finally pulled it off. It's now protruding from the inside of his …