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PICK UP AX Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pick Up Ax, a study of the collision between high-tech ideas and below-the-belt realities, is peppered with the jargon of several interfacing subcultures: the computer industry, science-fantasy freaks (references abound to Star Wars and Star Trek, to Lost in Space and The Lord of the Rings), recreational drug users (“I’m down to stems and seeds,” says a man who’s left with no professional options), rock and roll fans, and computer-game players....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But, when some of the Catholic clergy preaches in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that: “To kill a Jew is not a sin” which too often was heard on Christian Holidays in Poland, prior to and during the infamous pogrom on Jews in the Polish city of Kielce on July 4, 1946, who is to be held more responsible?...

The only full-time professional chamber orchestra in the United States returns to Chicago for a special Orchestra Hall concert. One of the world’s most sensitive and accomplished chamber ensembles, its 24 players have an unsurpassed sense of color and line–and flexibility in performing music of all periods. The group’s present appearance is particularly significant because it’s the first here with their new director of music Christopher Hogwood, who has finally provided the ensemble with the strong leadership it so lacked during the tenure of Pinchas Zukerman....

Contrary to what the popular press usually claims, there are still a good number of formidable women blues singers in Chicago. Six of them–above from left, Bonnie Lee, Foxy Lady, Deitra Farr, Mary Lane, Pat “Soul” Scaggs, and Nora Jean–will be featured this weekend along with ace guitarist Johnny B. Moore and a band of his fellow west-siders–Fred Lester, sax; Willie Kent, bass; Bald-Head Pete Williams, drums–augmented by the superb traditional Chicago piano of Barrelhouse Chuck....

The 11th Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival continues from Friday, November 15, through Sunday, November 17, at Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont, and the University of Chicago Law School Auditorium, 1111 E. 60th St. Tickets ($4 for Most matinees, $6 for most evening shows) go on sale a half hour before the first show; advance tickets can be purchased before the day of the show at Chicago Filmmakers. Festival passes are $55 (good for all screenings) and $25 (good for six screenings)....

Round and round we go. From the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery: “Lip reductions are the prominent procedures requested by Blacks, in contrast to the current demand for collagen injections by Caucasians who want a full-lipped look.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Big Sister is watching you. U.S. Representative and Senate candidate Lynn Martin says she respects freedom of the press, and she’s showing it (according to her own press release) by doing her best to suppress a magazine she believes “appear[s] to condone drug use” and “advertises drug paraphernalia....

There was no batting practice before last Friday night’s White Sox game. Instead, there was a softball-hitting contest. So while the softball players gathered in the outfield in their patchwork uniforms, before the doors were opened to the small crowd gathering outside, an occasional member or two of the White Sox strolled out onto the field. Donnie Hill–looking like some new creature out of Greek myth, half normal human/half ball player, wearing only a freebie shoe-company T-shirt from the waist-up, his uniform perfect from the waist down–played catch with pitcher Steve Rosenberg....

In the sixth grade, and many times since, I’ve heard it claimed that you can double over a piece of paper seven times but never eight, no matter what the paper’s size. Since, as a sixth grader, I could fold the paper in half seven times, I felt certain an Arnold Schwarzenegger could do eight. Why not? Is there something inherent in the mathematics of doubling? Some physical limitation? Or is it simply that the eighth doubling takes more strength than most people have–meaning a sufficiently powerful machine could do it eight times?...

This is important! What are the Roman numerals for 1990? Possible solutions: (1) MXM, (2) MCMXC, or the cumbersome (3) MDCCCCLXXXX. Help! –Anonymous, Chicago Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In school, for instance, you may have learned that the Romans used M for 1,000 because it stood for the Latin mille, thousand. Wrong on two counts: many authorities think it’s only coincidence that the number M happened to look like the letter M (ditto for C = 100–it’s unlikely C stood for centum, hundred)....

How much does the average American really know about Native American women? Famous Indian women in the history books, like Pocahontas and Sacagawea, are only notable because of their heroic acts to save white men. Very few people can name any Native American females who have made a difference on behalf of their own culture. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Our history as Native women in the Americas is very different from the history of white European women,” says Monique....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A needle exchange will benefit Mr. Kitchen in at least three ways. First, AIDS is expensive. The average lifetime cost of treating a person with AIDS is $102,000. In the absence of medical insurance, taxpayers like Mr. Kitchen foot the bill. By reducing AIDS among drug injectors, a needle exchange will conserve Mr. Kitchen’s money. Mr....

It was Karen’s first vacation in six years and we decided to have lunch one day. She picked the Goose Island Brewery, just off Clybourn Avenue and not quite on Goose Island. It was a sunny Tuesday and traffic was light as we cruised down Clybourn past the Webster Place theaters and the Treasure Island and the Thunderbird Bar & Grill. “Maybe he got hit by a car,” I decided. This sounded somewhat more logical....

My tenth-grade art teacher, a nice lady named Ms. Hennessy, did not like white space. “Fill the whole page,” she would say when she looked at our drawings and paintings. “All the way to the edges. Don’t leave anything blank.” Ms. Hennessy would like the Roseland-Pullman Mural Project, which was painted this summer on the railroad viaduct at South 113th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. It carries an explosion of bright colors across every available inch of concrete, covering four large walls at each corner of the viaduct and both sides of the 113-foot passageway that stretches underneath the train tracks....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The right to own property is why this country’s economic system has dramatically outperformed those which limit or outlaw private property ownership. Ownership does not simply “happen,” as Joravsky appears to believe: It is the direct result of hard work and productive behavior. Property rights are earned, not given (or taken away) by neighbors, committees, or journalists....

Just guitar and percussion–and a good deal more music than you’d expect that combination to yield. David Onderdonk ranks among the city’s most creative, least-known guitarists, and he’s a composer of unusual and wonderful tunes; Mark Walker’s versatility and imagination have helped make him the favorite drummer of what seems to be half the city’s musicians. Of course, Onderdonk and Walker alone would hardly seem to consititute a “band,” but these are modern times....

It is the day after the Detroit Pistons won some championship or other. My friend Charlie calls me from Detroit to say he wants to come visit me. Is that basketball, baseball? I still don’t know. All I know is that following the triumph of the team, the celebrating in the streets left eight people dead. Ecstatic fans brandished bats and bricks and looted stores, and hundreds of people were stabbed, shot, or beaten....

It wasn’t so long ago that dope dealers and prostitutes were peddling their wares from the front entrance of the Rosemont Apartments, a nine-story building at 1061 W. Rosemont, in Edgewater. “I don’t think many people could do what Candace has done–she’s a remarkable woman,” says John McDermott, a community organizer for the Edgewater Community Council. “But there is a message here for other communities. Candace created a problem-solving partnership with the police to crack down on a local trouble spot....

JACQUES AND HIS MASTER Of course you can argue that the author’s dissident status makes everything he writes ipso facto political. Kundera concedes as much in the introduction to the play, where he explains how it came to be. Banned from publishing after the Soviet invasion, Kundera says he was approached by a director who “proposed that I write a stage adaptation, under his name, of Dostoyevski’s The Idiot.” Kundera refused, not simply because Dostoyevski was Russian, but because Dostoyevski’s writing reflects Russian irrationality: “a universe where everything turns to feeling; in other words, where feelings are promoted to the rank of value and of truth....

Almost 20 years ago composer John Eaton and electronic-instrument designer Robert Moog devised a keyboard that would allow the performer better control over a wide range of sounds. At the time Moog had already come up with a first-generation synthesizer, named after himself and made famous by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos. This pioneer effort inspired the models now used by rock ‘n’ rollers and commercial jingle writers; the Eaton-Moog Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Keyboars, however, is an even more intricate apparatus with keys that respond in various ways according to finer pressure....

Kenosha is about the size of Evanston and shares certain characteristics: it has a scenic and inviting lakefront, a couple of colleges, and a long and winding Sheridan Road. It’s a 75-to-90-minute drive from downtown Chicago–a straight run up I-94, exiting at either highway 50 (which is 75th Street in Kenosha) or 158 (which is 52nd Street), and many come here to shop, lured by the powerful scent of real and imagined bargains....