
The Source of Dr Seuss’ Lorax? - agronaut
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/is-dr-seusss-lorax-real-these-professors-may-have-solved-a-47-year-old-mystery/2018/07/20/396f3b9e-8a90-11e8-8aea-86e88ae760d8_story.html
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nerdponx
_That may seem like a set of curious but inconsequential similarities, but
these authors argue that how we think of the Lorax determines how we think
about his plight. Regarding the Lorax as an animal indigenous to the land of
the Truffula trees “challenges traditional interpretations of the Lorax as an
ecopoliceman asserting his authority.” In other words, the Lorax isn’t some
tiresome scold, some shrill environmentalist who makes us want to throw up our
hands and sigh, “Good-by, Thing. You sing too long.” No, the Lorax is a
creature intimately dependent on the land that the Once-ler is destroying.
That, the authors suggest, makes his story much more sympathetic._

I've never heard of such an un-sympathetic interpretation of The Lorax before.
It seems odd to me, considering the overt moral of the story.

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st26
Those folks are certainly out there. If The Lorax doesn't fit in your
worldview (e.g. "drill baby drill") you concoct some way to write it off.

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DoreenMichele
Color me unsurprised that this is (probably) based on some real life creature.
I used to think that Dr. Seuss was incredibly "creative" and made up all kinds
of stuff whole cloth that was just bizarre. Then, I lived in San Diego County
for a while.

Dr. Seuss lived there. The zany architecture? It's exaggerated, but not
entirely made up.

For example, there's Horton Plaza, a five story open air mall in downtown San
Diego that is built like that because there's so little rain down there. It
reminds me of the architecture in stories like _Horton Hears A Who_ :

[https://www.westfield.com/hortonplaza](https://www.westfield.com/hortonplaza)

The bizarre trees that looked like sticks with something puffy on top (in The
Lorax story, actually)? You can see similar trees (with pink bark, no less) in
La Jolla, where he lived for a time. (Not disputing that he drew inspiration
from Kenyan trees for this story in specific. Just saying the vegetation in La
Jolla is weird looking and not like what I grew up with or have seen in other
parts of the US.)

Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist during WW2. It's not surprising that a
controversial political position is one of his favorite works.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss)

There's a statue of, iirc, him and the Cat in the Hat on campus in front of
the Geisel library (his actual last name) at UCSD in La Jolla.

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codingdave
Wasn't Horton Plaza built in the 80s? Which would make it more likely that
they were responding to Dr. Seuss when they built it, not inspiring his
drawings decades before it was built.

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DoreenMichele
It opened in 1985. But I'm pretty confident that the numerous restaurants with
outdoor seating and similar quirks are in response to local weather
conditions, not an ode to Dr. Seuss. If you visit the area, well, there are
lots of architectural quirks that would not make sense in wetter weather or
less temperate weather.

The mall is not named for the character in the Dr. Seuss book:

"Alonzo Erastus Horton (October 24, 1813 – January 7, 1909) was an American
real estate developer in the nineteenth century. The Horton Plaza mall in
downtown San Diego is named for him."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Horton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Horton)

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vortico
I've seen over-application of machine learning in areas it doesn't belong, but
this is ridiculous. I'm not saying it's a cool discovery of the match, but
should I believe that they were the first to notice it and not almost every
Kenyan child reading Dr. Seuss?

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DonaldPShimoda
Next they'll determine which breed of cat was the basis of fact for the Cat in
the Hat... and I really don't think that I could stand that.

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koverda
Breaking news: Cat in the Hat breed discovered:
[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1f/d9/18/1fd918c5fa38d794847cd5dc4...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1f/d9/18/1fd918c5fa38d794847cd5dc4deba9dc
--halloween-costumes-for-cats-pet-costumes.jpg)

It's a 'Tuxie'

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
Without the right usage of machine learning it's hard to be sure that there's
no questions burning ablaze in the back of a layperson's mind... but I think,
overall, that it'll be fine.

(I'm trying too hard and I'm gonna stop with the rhymes. Also: that's a darn
cute cat, so thanks for filling me in!)

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13of40
And all this time I thought he was an emperor tamarin.[1]

[1][https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02140/mo...](https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02140/moustache-
monkey_2140620i.jpg)

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teddyh
Non-paywalled article:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/science/lorax-dr-seuss-
en...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/science/lorax-dr-seuss-
environment.html)

Probably both based on the original article here (also not paywalled):

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0628-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0628-x)

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ejlangev
Funny how they needed to make the story serious by applying machine learning
to determine exactly which type of monkey the Lorax was based on. One would
think that just looking at them would be sufficient.

The Lorax living on that land does make him even more sympathetic but it's not
like he was un-sympathetic before that. Funny that a popular children's story
has the message "Capitalism will destroy the environment" at a time when the
politics of that statement and environmental policy in general are so fraught.

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samcheng
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get
better. It's not."

    
    
      -  Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

~~~
ejlangev
I think that's the most important message of the book. It's not enough to
sympathize with the Lorax, you have to do something about it if you want it to
be any different.

