RANDOM THOUGHTS - February 11, 2011

I have been watching the news for 18 days now. And checking my tweets on twitter quite regularly. Last night I was disgusted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's broadcast to his people. After almost three weeks of peaceful protest (for the most part, and we know who started the killing!) everyone in Tahrir Square, Cairo was being misled by government media outlets that their president was finally preparing to leave.

Instead, halfway into his speech he mentioned he was staying until September and that's when the celebratory mood went sour. Very sour. The ultimate insult, peaceful protesters began to wave their shoes in the air. Not a good sign.

The girls have no school today so I slept in. The first thing I did was check my iPod for any news on what was happening. I couldn't believe my eyes. Mubarek had FINALLY announced that he was stepping down as president. WOW!

At first I was skeptical. I checked more messages and kept reading them as they came in. I went onto my laptop to get updates from the internet. IT WAS TRUE!

It all started with a 28 year old young man by the name of Khaled Said who was brutally murdered by Egyptian police. They lied about him, saying he had swallowed a bag of drugs when they found him. Instead he was brutally beaten and murdered. This became apparent when photos of his body began to leak out.

So a Google exec by the name of Wael Ghonim began a Facebook page and began posting information of other individuals being tortured and/or killed by the Egyptian Police. An English version of the page was created with a different person serving as administrator. The goal was to have a peaceful protest on January 25th, what is called Police Day in Egypt. The people came and the rest is now history. Hosni Mubarak is no longer President. Woohoo!

BEAUMONT BUZZ - Visit to a Radio Station

Last night our 2nd Beaumont Wolf Cub Pack visited the radio station for 630CHED/Cool 880/CISN COUNTRY/Joe FM as part of a requirement to earn the Blue Star. We had a tour of the whole facility and the boys even got to go on live with Mike McGuire for a small portion of the CISN COUNTRY broadcast last night. I have proof! He made a CD recording of that portion and gave it to me to share with the boys.

We also got to record our voices and see what they looked like on the computer when being played back. Our host explained how such files can be edited to cut out the umms an ahs to make news reports sound better. All in all we had a great time and learned a lot about how radio serves the community.