Legal walls worldwide: map

Everyone: Be careful not to post walls that will be ruined by tourist traffic. Unless you are intimate with a particular wall's situation, don't blow up the spot for the people who paint there!

Writers: No wall is arrest-proof, because some police are not very interested in permission walls, so please keep that in mind when you plan what to take with you and what to say if confronted. Be good guests and take your litter with you. If you tag nearby buildings, the wall will soon be ruined and everyone will know who ruined it.

Photographers: Graffiti is covered by copyright, so don't think you can go to a wall to do commercial photography and get away without obtaining the artists' permission. It's much cheaper to make advance arrangements.

Election maps, USA

Here are a bunch of election maps from various sources shown on one page from Yahoo. You can see that things are looking good for Obama, but that there are a bunch of battleground states that could go either way. Your vote will matter more this year than ever, especially if you're in a state where the count is close. It isn't over until it's over. In lots of districts the race will probably be decided by a few hundreds or thousands of votes.

Some reports are coming in about the touch screen voting machines changing votes. This seems to be a calibration problem. Be careful to check your results on those before you finalize your vote. If you're more than 5 feet tall, it's easy to hit the wrong candidate with your finger, just like on ATMs. Report any problems at the polls and to reportvotingproblems.org.

Expect long lines in some places and take something to entertain yourself. Expect idiots to try to discourage you and fool you into not voting by trying to get you out of line somehow. Expect to get lies on flyers and mailings. Whenever the vote is tight this kind of discouragement happens to try to get people to give up. Most of that stuff is illegal, so report it as best you can.