The 15th annual Chicago Humanities Festival, this year themed “Time,” runs November 4 through 14, offering dozens of lectures, readings, and discussions by an international collection of writers, artists, and scholars as well as film screenings and theatrical and musical performances. Unless otherwise noted, all programs are $5 in advance, $6 (cash only) at the door. (Tickets for some sold-out programs may become available; check at the venue 20-30 minutes before the program....

First, do no harm. Then check the diagnosis. Joanne Doroshow of the Center for Justice & Democracy calls the American Medical Association “a shameful organization that has chosen to lie down with a profiteering industry instead of protecting patients. The AMA and state medical societies have created a ‘crisis’ atmosphere in many states [including Illinois] by encouraging doctors to strike until caps [on doctors’ liability] are enacted.” Writing for TomPaine.com (June 19), she bolsters her case with a study issued by the independent financial-ratings agency Weiss Ratings on June 2, which found that “over the last decade, states with caps on non-economic damage awards saw doctors’ malpractice insurance premiums rise faster than in states without caps…....

JANUARY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Chicago chapter of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) sent ten bus loads of protesters to October’s antiwar march on Washington, and they hope to dispatch even more to tomorrow’s follow-up rally and march on the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard to protest a war with Iraq. “This is going to be big, but we’re not sure how big,” says one of the organizers....

A Reasonable Facsimile Theatre Company presents this campy late-night send-up of Claudia Jennings’s 1976 bayou revenge tragedy exactly 25 years after the Playboy Playmate, drive-in sexploitation queen, and Evanston Township High School graduate died a la Jayne Mansfield in a head-on collision. The film is a curious choice for satire; unimaginative and amateurish, it’s all but devoid of historical or cultural significance, offering little to ridicule but backwater hicks, puerile misogyny, and bad acting....

Basically an episodic comedy, Jean-Luc Godard’s Soigne ta droite (1986, 82 min.), a French-Swiss coproduction, features Godard himself as the comic lead, rehearsals of the rock group Rita Mitsouko, a good many gags (some involving golf and travel), and a lot of cameos from well-known French actors, including Jane Birkin, Bernadette Lafont, and Jacques Villeret. The biggest surprise here, though, is Godard’s modification of his own persona: in contrast to the grumpy, would-be sages of First Name: Carmen and King Lear, his benign and ethereal character is positively Keatonian, with echoes of Tati’s Monsieur Hulot as well....

Anatol Longinow placed a diagram on an overhead projector to show a roomful of colleagues the perimeter wall he designed for the Harold Washington Social Security Center on West Madison. Longinow was speaking at a dinner meeting of structural engineers on the topic “Designing to Resist Terrorist Attacks.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One man stood out from the crowd. He was wearing a zip-up sweatshirt over a dress shirt and tie and drinking through a straw from a Styrofoam cup....

LARRY CORYELL TRIO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The discography of Larry Coryell–at 57, still one of the most gifted and fascinating guitarists in American music–is almost as varied as his mercurial, muscular improvisations. In the past five years alone, his releases have ranged from a solid neofusion effort, Spaces Revisited (Shanachie), to an awfully good solo acoustic album, Private Concert (Acoustic Music), to last year’s New High (Highnote), which augments a traditional piano-bass-drums rhythm section with trumpet and vibes....

Bailiwick Repertory and the Lesbian Theatre Initiative have teamed up to present the first edition of what they hope will be an annual multidisciplinary lesbian-centered fest showcasing drama, stage combat, poetry, comedy, and music by artists from around the country as well as Chicago. The event runs through May 4 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont. Individual ticket prices are shown below; a festival pass costs $50. In addition to the shows, the festival sponsors workshops on performance techniques taught by Cin Salach and Bev Spangler Saturdays at noon; admission to these is $10 or “pay what you can” at the door....

A few years ago New York new-music composer Michael Gordon hit the London discos with Damian leGassick, a computer musician who’s worked with the likes of Madonna, K.D. Lang, and Blur. LeGassick had suggested that Gordon experiment with dance music, and the ensuing collaboration produced two songs on Gordon’s new Light Is Calling (Nonesuch) that fuse minimalist explorations of jazz and modern art music with electronica. The almost danceable “My Frig” plants Gordon’s synthesizer and Kermit Driscoll’s double bass over a drum loop that accelerates until Gordon and a violin trio are soaring around each other at breakneck speed; “Imreadywhenyouare” is a hypnotic exchange between Alex Sweeton’s ethereal vocals, Mark Stewart’s understated guitar, and the same violins....

Pod People Take Over Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Morrison is his own man. Last Saturday afternoon, midway through what used to be called the Pilsen East Artists’ Open House, he mustered his forces. A ragtag band of 15 or 20 celebrants in fuzzy animal suits and sombreros marched down Podville’s main artery to protest what they believe has become an exclusive and divisive event....

DUB NARCOTIC SOUND SYSTEM 5/10, SCHUBAS The collective led by ex-Beat Happening front man and K Records owner Calvin Johnson doesn’t have a regular lineup, and it hasn’t released an album since 1999’s Sideways Soul (K), a collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (their companions for most of this tour but not in Chicago). Like Spencer, Johnson puts a distinctly pale and self-conscious spin on a variety of black musical forms that inform rock ‘n’ roll (in Spencer’s case it’s the blues, in Johnson’s reggae and funk, though both also dabble in hip-hop)....

TATSU AOKI’S MIYUMI PROJECT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bassist Tatsu Aoki has recorded more than half a dozen albums of solo improvisation, leads or coleads three groups, and as a sideman anchors bands for artists ranging from Fred Anderson to Von Freeman to Elijah Levi to Francis Wong–so you’d think the last thing he’d need was another creative outlet. But his Miyumi Project covers some new ground....

In Arthur Miller’s most recent play, Finishing the Picture, a husband whom we understand to be Miller throws up his hands and admits he can’t save his deeply depressed wife, whom we understand to be Marilyn Monroe. Until I saw The Last Yankee I had no idea what a breakthrough this admission was for Miller. First performed in 1993, The Last Yankee concerns two couples with wives depressed enough to have been committed....

The Villain Makes His Exit Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Korn–who’s gone back home to Kentucky and admits he bounced some checks–was a stranger to most of the Illuzzio company before he showed up in Chicago this spring, script in hand and ready to do a show. “I tried to check out his background early on and it looked legit,” says actor Ross Boehringer, who’d responded to a call for auditions in PerformInk....

Electroclash: New York City Compilation Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Electroclash” is the name New York scenesters have given to their stagey spin on electro–a fusion of hip-hop and funk created in New York in the early 80s with the aid of the Roland TR-808 drum synthesizer. Most date the genre back to Afrika Bambaataa’s 1982 single “Planet Rock,” which he made with producer Arthur Baker and keyboardist John Robie, reportedly after being blown away by Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express; key variations came courtesy of Mantronix, Melle Mel, Cybotron, the Jonzun Crew, and the Micronawts, among others....

The Stockyards Theatre Project’s fourth annual showcase of woman-centered drama, coproduced with Link’s Hall, features storytelling, dance, improv, stand-up comedy, and other forms. The festival runs October 24-26 at Link’s Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield. Performances are at 8 PM; each evening features a different lineup of seven to nine pieces with one intermission (latecomers will not be seated until then). Tickets cost $12 per night; a festival pass is $27. Call 773-281-0824 for information and reservations....

Organized by local video maker Usama Alshaibi, this third annual indie festival offers an energetic collection of nine videos and two films from Paris and across the U.S. In Christina Spangler’s moody and assured 16-millimeter clay animation Unearthed a dropped potato rolls into the forest and sprouts legs. When a cat pounces on the potato he fights back, tearing out one of the cat’s eyes and placing it in his own spud head; later he discovers an open bag of potato chips and the chips dance in the moonlight like ghosts....

Every year around Jazz Fest we (and no doubt the festival programming committee) lament the shrinking pool of jazz giants: the kind of players who attract broad audiences due to their historical importance, experience, and technical mastery. This year alone the world has lost Shirley Scott, Big John Patton, Ray Brown, Wilber Morris, Russ Freeman, and Roy Kral. What’s not often said is that the jazz audience is undoubtedly shrinking too, as fans who grew up along with the music grow older and fewer alongside their heroes....

In 1962 pianist Abdullah Ibrahim left South Africa for Switzerland, where he was discovered the next year by Duke Ellington, who produced his northern-hemisphere recording debut. His jabbing bass notes, well-placed chords, and authoritative attack declare his kinship with Ellington, and also with Thelonious Monk, whose tunes Ibrahim covers from time to time. But those influences account for just a sliver of his sound. He spent his youth soaking up the gospel music of his grandfather’s Christian church, traditional Xhosa tribal tunes, the circular patterns and overlapping rhythms common to much African percussion music, and the simplified, streamlined brand of jazz that took root in his native Cape Town....

Over a half century Stan Brakhage has come to be regarded as our most significant avant-garde filmmaker, admired for the way he explores the plastic, rhythmic quality of images (most of his films lack sound tracks or obvious narratives). The six masterpieces on this program come from different periods in his career, but they all retain their vibrancy by undercutting our expectations, even violating their own patterns or structures. Making its Chicago premiere is the hand-painted series Interpolations 1-5 (1992), whose full 35-millimeter frame allows for more detail and diversity than Brakhage’s customary smaller film stock....