The math is correct, but the manner of presentation is definitely intended to be humorous -- Tom Lehrer is one of the premiere American satirists of the latter half of the 20th Century, and he did his best to offend everyone equally : )
If you check out his first album, self-published when he was a Harvard undergrad, the songs are pretty out there (c.f. I Hold Your Hand In Mine, The Irish Lullaby, The Hunting Song).
His later albums include more current events and items of topical interest, and were generally recorded live -- the prose intros are spoken on the records. Many of the songs (e.g. Vatican Rag, Pollution, Smut) were written especially for David Frost's pioneering news satire TV show, That Was The Week That Was (or TW3). |
