Top 40 BC: Forget old school, this MP3 collection digitized by the musicologists at the University of California Santa Barbara is strictly antique-school. Made up of 6,000 or so wax cylinder recordings of pre-WWI pop, the often raunchy and racist titles include the 1908 hit “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” and the Peerless Quartet’s 1910 recording of “A Coon Wedding in Southern Georgia.” Don’t worry, there’s also plenty of ragtime, marching bands and sentimental Irish ballads at http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu.

Comic book confessional: Ever wonder which superheroes take communion on Sunday? Which defenders of justice don’t work Yom Kippur? Which protectors of mankind won’t join you for lunch during Ramadan? The Religion of Comic Book Characters finally answers these questions and more with a comprehensive index of fictional heroes’ personal faiths. Thunderbird III from the X-Men celebrates Diwali. Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, doesn’t eat shellfish. And Captain Canuck got his BA in heroics from Brigham Young University. Increase the peace at www.adherents.com/lit/comics/comic_book_religion.html.

Comments? Michael Citrome