Screen (TV) Battlestar Galactica (Season Two) The remnants of the human race are fleeing through space from evil robots. In the hands of the hacks who ruined Star Trek, it'd be just another dumb sci-fi show. But the new Battlestar Galactica, the second season of which started in July, is anything but dumb. The new episodes pick up an instant after the season one finale, with characters worth caring about, movie-quality f/x, and more pitch-perfect dramatic notes before the opening credits than most shows hit in a whole hour. Sorry, sci-fi geeks – you don't get this all to yourself. Galactica is simply the best show on television. – Adam Rogers
Music Kraftwerk Minimum-Maximum Before dismissing the recording of a Kraftwerk concert as an exercise in semantics, listen to this double-disc set. The band substantially reworked its cache of classics for last year's world tour; as a result, sine-wave symphonies like "The Model," "Numbers," and "The Man Machine" are even more fun to compute. – Sean Cooper
Music Dungen Ta Det Lugnt Gustav Ejstes' home-recorded masterpiece is a magic carpet ride through rock's stylistic prefixes (psych, prog, garage, chamber, and classic) with intoxicating forays into folk and jazz. Unless you speak Swedish, you won't understand the lyrics. Don't let that scare you away – Ta Det Lugnt is one of the year's top guitar albums. – Ken Taylor
Games (PC) Dungeon Siege II This atmospheric fantasy role-playing game is surprisingly deep: It requires lots of strategic thinking and offers ample opportunities to tweak and upgrade your characters' abilities. Yet it moves as quickly as an '80s arcade classic. Gameplay is a glorious blur of sword slashes, spell flashes, and the desperate cries of felled beasts. – Kieron Gillen
Games (PS2) EyeToy: Play 2 Sony's new bundle of 12 games makes excellent use of its EyeToy camera, which lets players interact with onscreen objects. The highlights: Trade blows with a virtual foe in Knockout. Swing your arm around for surprisingly precise volleying in Table Tennis. And bob and duck to avoid spotlights while surreptitiously picking locks in Secret Agent. – Paul Semel
Print Geek Chic: The Ultimate Guide to Geek Culture Neil Feineman Feineman's book exhaustively chronicles geekdom, from Archimedes to Xbox. There are a few – ahem – objectionable entries (Brandon from Beverly Hills, 90210? Hello, David was the awkward one!), but the catalog's near-religious zeal for dork boosterism is infectious and not to be missed. – David Downs
Print Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment Gregory Berns Berns argues that the more unfamiliar things we encounter, the more our brains fire off dopamine. According to him, even great sex and food can be unfulfilling if they're old news. Satisfaction can come from anywhere (exercise, crossword puzzles, S&M) when the experiences are novel. – Daniel Terdiman
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