Great Moments in Pedantry: Fact-checking "Don't Fear the Reaper"

boing
41

That was a great Easter Egg. Martin actually wrote that episode, of course.

42

It should be obvious that “Romeo and Juliet” = 100% (in love), ergo the Blue Oyster Cult lyric “(Romeo and Juliet) forty thousand men and women every day” was simply a lyrical code for “100 and 40,000” or “140,000”, the actual world wide death rate circa 1976 when the song was released. The things you have to explain to people these days.

43

No, no, no, you’ve all got it wrong. The ‘reaper’ clearly only applies to Christians- other religions have their own personification of death. Wikipedia tells us that Christians make up about 30% of the world’s population; 30% of 140,000 is 42,000- so 40,000 is a reasonable estimate.

2 Likes
44

I am finally, after years of darkness, starting to get used to the fact that it is ‘pedantic’ not ‘pendantic’. [pedantic still sounds wrong though] Thanks BB!!

45

Yeah, I hear that a lot of the work is going overseas to Kali and Yama.

46

Very similar to my “terrible racists” theory except imputing anthropological-accuracy motives (instead of, you know, the terrible racism). I like this one.

47

This is [quote=“sirdigbypollo, post:16, topic:29323, full:true”]
Here’s the problem with this article: not enough cowbell.
[/quote]

This is the best yet, and it’s a damn shame we aren’t going to get 40,000 men and women
to like it in time.

48

Don’t fear the cowbell.

49

What was the death rate in the year 1303 when Romeo and Juliet supposedly died? Was this the death rate in the world or just the “known world”?

BTW, while you’re checking this, could you double check that there really were 99 Luftballons in Nena’s song? Somehow I suspect an even 100.

50

As a musician, let me explain it to you:

  1. As you point out, when the song was written, the death rate was about 140,000 per day.
  2. It’s a song. “One hundred forty thousand men and women every day” doesn’t fit within the metre of the song; “forty thousand men and women every day” does.
  3. That’s called poetic license.
51

Yes. And a post about whether or not they were accurate is called “being silly”.

52

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