Curse of the Simpsons Strikes Again!

Looks like Mickey Rooney died, marking yet another victim of the Curse of the Simpsons. He was a guest star in one of my all-time favorite episodes, Radioactive Man the Movie ("The goggles, they do nothing!").

I also see that over at the new fivethirtyeight site, Ben Morris did a very similar analysis to see if professional wrestlers die early. Unlike being a guest on the Simpsons, which correlates with an additional 3 years of longevity, being a pro wrestler seems to be very bad for your health.

One good point on Ben's analysis is that he used different actuarial tables for different years (to account for improving health technology), while I only used a recent one. I don't think this would change the Curse of the Simpsons much, and if it did it would be in the direction of making the anti-curse even stronger.