Interesting New Orleans articles from today's papers

A few interesting articles from today's newspapers:

1. This is from yesterday's T-P, but FEMA has announces it is going to close all trailer parks within 6 months.
   
   The FEMA spokesman frames the news as showing that FEMA is "being compassionate and making sure we have people taken care of with housing." But a Loyola law clinic lawyer says that FEMA has not helped previous trailer park residents find housing. The other issue about FEMA trailers is the never-answered questions about formaldehyde in the trailers. Testing has never been done on them.


2. On another housing-related issue for the poor/working poor, the housing projects around N.O. are slated for demolition December 15th. The article fails to mention any pending lawsuits/appeals to the demolition.
   
   One should also look at the blog comments below any public housing article on nola.com. There are some ignorant/racist comments on there, but there are also a few with different perspectives on the destruction of the projects, including the less compelling argument about important city architecture.


3. A T-P cover story marks the end of hurricane season.
   Anytime Mark Schliefstein writes something, you ought to read it. He is the T-P reporter about things like flood protection, wetlands, etc. He is always able to steer through the b-s peddled to him by the city, state, and federal bureaucracies and get to the heart of the issues. Here, he reviews how hurricanes avoided doing major damage in the U.S. this year, while pointing out the impossibility of predicting these things well.
   Most important thing here: the issue of hurricane forecasting is developing all the time. The predictions frequently are way off (as they have luckily been the last two years), but not because the scientists are bad at their jobs. Instead, the science is developing at such speed that every year yields new insights about how to more accurately predict hurricanes.


4. Finally, a nice travel piece from the NYTimes about some different places to visit around the city. It includes a few different places I haven't been before, in addition to Musician's Village (the go-to feel good place for tourists to visit after viewing the destruction), Ray's Boom Boom Room and Ignatius. Ignatius has good alligator po-boys.

That's all for now.