Having seen more than my share of photographs of snowflakes, I recently noticed that most seem to be perfect mirror images. How can the spines on ONE side of the flake possibly know what random shapes those on the OTHER are assuming in an essentially random freezing environment? Why would not all snowflakes be nonsymmetrical masses of frozen material with absolutely NO symmetry whatsoever? –Pete Formaini, Ithaca, New York As water vapor rises into the colder upper atmosphere it cools, and when chilled enough condenses into infinitesimal water droplets, which commonly form around particles of dust, sea salt, etc, known as nucleation sites....

J Dilla wasn’t the first producer to recognize the potential for rap beats to evolve from a backdrop for MCs into a freestanding art form, but the records he made before his death in 2006 have done more to guide that evolution in the past decade than any of their predecessors. Following in Dilla’s footsteps is a loose but growing coalition of producers who slip the bonds of traditional hip-hop boom-bap with their drum programming and largely forgo melodies in favor of dense atmospheres compounded from organ snippets, field recordings, video-game bleeps, and whatever else ends up in their samplers....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “There is the little girl who heard a story about her grandmother’s best friend, a long time ago, a friend who aborted her pre-wedding pregnancy with some implement found on the farm, because getting pregnant before marriage made a woman into a whore and a slut and she would be ostracized for the rest of her life. Instead, she was buried in her wedding dress before the scheduled wedding date....

Mike Sula Galbi burger, Rice ‘n Bread Remember Hamburger King? The Wrigleyville greasy spoon that was Korean owned but more Japanese in spirit? Open since 1959, and just next door to the Nisei Lounge, it was a remnant of the neighborhood’s now much reduced Japanese population, and known not just for its 20s-style burger and other American diner classics but for things like teriyaki, bulgogi, the Chinese beef noodle soup yet ca mein, and an odd egg and vegetable scramble with gravy rice known as akutagawa, named for the longtime customer that invented it....

Marcos Vilas Boas Bárbara Eugenia There are a number of English-language songs on É o Que Temos (Oi Música), the recent album from the terrific Brazilian singer Bárbara Eugenia, but it seems unlikely that any of them—not to mention the ones sung in her native Portuguese—will find many ears here in the U.S. There’s nothing new about that—sing in a language other than English and the odds that your music will get heard in this country are slim to none....

The 15th annual Asian American Showcase, presented by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media and the Gene Siskel Film Center, runs Friday, April 2, through Thursday, April 15, with screenings at the Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $10, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are selected films screening through Thursday, April 8; for a complete schedule visit siskelfilmcenter.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Michael Vallera From time to time, especially in the dead of winter, it so happens that only a handful of Soundboard writeups fall on the first few days of the week. But there’s always more going on than we manage to write about, no matter how cold it gets. This week—aside from the critics’ picks after the jump—Monday’s shows include fingerstyle guitarist Ryley Walker at the Burlington and Femi Kuti & the Positive Force at Metro....

Wondering whom the New York Times intends to endorse for president? A string of editorials published since the conventions ended may have tipped its hand: The Chicago Tribune is a different story. Against the Times‘s seven editorials since the convention commenting on any of the candidates, I’ve spotted just two in the Tribune, both about Palin. They were as two-fisted as the Venus de Milo. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Daniel Burnham probably never said his most famous words. But we’re in a time when we should be rethinking the plan and its mandates for the 21st century, not holding it up as scripture. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But a lot of the plan is now simply unthinkable, and many of Burnham and Bennett’s projections are based on premises that history has proved false....

Since being laid off in early August, Sunny Neater-DuBow has emerged as a poster child for the great Chicago Public Schools purge, in which Ron Huberman and the Board of Education swept more than 1,300 teachers from the system. He said he’d already cut central office spending to the bone and was now asking teachers to forgo a 4 percent raise that kicks in next month. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

At the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, I don’t mind admitting that I believe political reform in Chicago can come from the City Council. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There are a few signs of rebellion. Last year the unions got 34 aldermen to take a stand against Daley on the big-box living-wage ordinance, forcing him to exercise his first mayoral veto. The council also managed to drag him, kicking and screaming, to an agreement to ban cigarette smoking in public places....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » More often than not the headliners’ slots are beyond mobbed, and the smaller acts haven’t figured out how to command a big festival stage. Even worse, plenty of out-of-town bands end up playing their one tour date in Chicago in front of thousands of indifferent onlookers interested mostly in defending their patch of dirt so they can catch the next, bigger act–and many of these bands have to sign noncompete agreements that preclude more intimate shows elsewhere in town for a big chunk of the rest of the year....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Earlier this autumn I spent a few weeks reading about the German director Werner Schroeter in order to write about Facets’s retrospective of his film work. It was probably the longest period of time I’d ever spent thinking about performance art, and I came out of it feeling barely capable of writing about it competently. Last week I was reminded again of how little I knew when I reviewed the documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, which also concerns the medium....

The Great Record Store Extinction is claiming another victim. Metal Haven, one of my all-time favorite record stores (the blurb from our Lincoln Square/North Center neighborhood guide is here), has announced on its MySpace blog that it’s closing its doors imminently. The upside is that the store is throwing an “Armageddon Sale,” which will offer progressively steeper discounts on everything in stock (with the exception of items bearing a red tag) until Metal Haven’s final day of business....

Light Pollution moved to Chicago from DeKalb about two and a half years ago, but James Cicero, the electro-psychedelic indie-rock outfit’s front man and songwriter, says he barely feels like part of the city’s music scene. “That’s always been weird for our band,” he says. “We’ve played with some cool Chicago bands. We have kind of mutual friends that are in cool bands. But it doesn’t feel like we’re very tied into the scene....

his guy friday Despite his protestations, the 42-year-old Emanuel is an unlikely candidate for the seat. For one thing, he’s not from the district, at least not in the conventional sense. Most Chicago politicians push the notion that they’re neighborhood guys. They point to the parks where they played, the high schools they graduated from. But Emanuel isn’t a neighborhood guy. He didn’t grow up in Ravenswood, North Center, Albany Park, Portage Park, Dunning, Belmont Cragin, or any of the other communities that make up the Fifth District....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tremlin makes the cognitive-science case that human beings have “an almost irresistible natural tendency, embodied in every single human brain in much the same way, to explain natural phenomena as the results of deliberate actions by thinking, feeling, supernatural agents.” In other words we’re programmed to see gods where there aren’t any. Dixon is pleased that both authors are less dogmatic than I just made them sound: “Both authors resist the temptation to make hasty inferences from their observations about the naturalness of religious beliefs to a conclusion about either the truth or the falsity of those beliefs....

See also: Saturday • Sunday • afterparties • Listen @ Spotify Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 1:30-2:15 Michael Kiwanuka The London-born son of two Ugandan immigrants, Michael Kiwanuka has delivered one of the strongest debut albums of the year: Home Again (Cherrytree/Interscope) is a collection of beautiful, laid-back soul and folk that sounds like a throwback to the late 60s and early 70s. When I first heard the opening track, “Tell Me a Tale,” I immediately thought of Chicago guitarist and songwriter Terry Callier—Kiwanuka braids spiritual jazz and exploratory soul into arrangements that owe a debt to Charles Stepney, one of the masterminds behind the Rotary Connection and producer of several of Callier’s records....

For an artist with only a modest-sized fan base, Amanda Palmer has an exceptionally large and passionate group of antifans. It’s a diverse group of haters: professionals and amateurs, people who despise her for the disparity between her artists’ rights advocacy and her blithe willingness to ask other musicians to donate their time to her profit-making ventures, and ones who simply think that she makes terrible music. One thing that we all have in common is that we’re easily trolled....

[Plus: Logan Square On Tap: The new brewpub and gastropub in Lula-land.] MIDDLE EASTERN | LUNCH, DINNER: SEVEN DAYS | OPEN LATE: FRIDAY & SATURDAY TILL 2, OTHER NIGHTS TILL MIDNIGHT | BYO Coffee shop | Breakfast, lunch: seven days BREAKFAST, AMERICAN, BURGERS | BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER: SEVEN DAYS | OPEN LATE: 24 HOURS DAILY | RESERVATIONS NOT ACCEPTED Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This large River North diner, the first Chicago location of the suburban chain, is almost frighteningly cheery, decorated in buttercup yellow with touches of sky blue and grass green and enormous displays of colorful fake flowers....