Revolution as spectator sport

"Egypt from 5,000 Miles Away", a cartoon by Domitille Collardey and Sarah Glidden, encapsulates the feelings of many of us who watched events unfold in Egypt.  We could only cheer for our team, we couldn't bat or carry the ball.

Do you remember where you were when…

...you learned that Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt.

From http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/10/live-blog-feb-11-egypt-protests

6:03pm: He's gone. He's resigned. 30 years of Mubarak rule is over. Omar Suleiman says:
President Hosni Mubarak has waived the office of president.

6:01pm: Omar Suleiman addressing nation now.

6:01 pm Cairo is 4:01 pm GMT, 9:01 am Eastern, and 10:01 am Central.

At 10:35 Central during a break in a University for Seniors French class, I took out my iPod and connected to the UMD network.  Oh, wow!  I interrupted everybody else's conversation to let them know.
The question is did Mubarak "waive the office of the president" or was he pushed out by other ministers or the army.  Do we even know if he is alive?

Al-Jazeera overloaded?

At about 7:00 CST this morning, I could not get the English edition of Al-Jazeera.  The progress bar would only go partway and the pages loaded indicator said "Contacting http://english.aljazeera.net" and nothing more.  If I did nothing, my browser said it was unable to contact the site.

I did find aljazeera.com, a magazine, but it didn't have he details of aljazeera.net.

Finally at about 8:30 I was able to get aljazeera.net.

My guess is that many people on the East Coast were online before going to work or just as they got to their offices.

Today's blog offered hope that the thugs had been pushed back, then it mentions that the army had left one bridge, and finally that thugs crashed through a group of supporters.