This is not a man with a blog.

World Series Of Poker, $1,000 No Limit Hold’em

By Shabbir | February 15, 2006 |

So I’ve been planning a trip to the World Series Of Poker this year.  Not because I think I can win an event, since I’m way outclassed.  I’m treating it more like Poker Fantasy Camp.  I’m going to pay a bunch of money to play with really good professionals and learn something while getting my…

Baseball grumbling about the free stadium

By Shabbir | February 14, 2006 | Comments Off on Baseball grumbling about the free stadium

The city’s CFO examined the spending cap the DC Council passed on the stadium legislation and says he thinks it won’t be a problem for raising the necessary money to build the new stadium for the Nationals.  This is something we agreed to as a part of the deal to get Major League Baseball.  However…

Mano a mano at the card table

By Shabbir | February 13, 2006 | Comments Off on Mano a mano at the card table

Over the weekend I got to play a decent amount of online poker.   I played a 180 person sit n’ go and placed 24th, which wasn’t bad.  I imploded at the end, trying to bluff a better player.  Shouldn’t have done that. I also played several 2 person matches, also known as "heads up" matches. …

Apple laps itself

By Shabbir | February 10, 2006 | Comments Off on Apple laps itself

I’m sitting on a decent sized chip stack in a poker tournament and digging through my Engadget backlog. Gee, do they post every product sent to them by the PR muffins?  It sure seems like they aren’t exercising much editorial filter these days. Anyway I thought they made an excellent point about the iPod Nano…

Reprinting the cartoon

By Shabbir | February 8, 2006 | Comments Off on Reprinting the cartoon

In case you’re living under a rock, a Danish newspaper ran a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhummad.  Images of the Prophet are forbidden in Islam, and Muslims around the world complained and demonstrated.  Then, to prove that the Europeans are better at being sanctimonious pricks than even Americans are, several European newspapers ran it again…

Reality Thins Out An Urban Vision

By Shabbir | February 7, 2006 |

And here we go… In Fairfax County’s official vision for Tysons Corner, thousands of people live clustered around the Metro stops planned there — riding the train or walking to work, leaving their cars at home and injecting new life into the austere glass and concrete hub. But in the reality of developers’ blueprints, a…

Google China Part Three: Digging out of your hole

By Shabbir | February 5, 2006 | Comments Off on Google China Part Three: Digging out of your hole

[This isn’t an editorial.  I am indeed a free speech activist, as any superficial historian of the First Amendment and the Internet can tell you.  But everything I say below is written from the point of view of a public affairs strategist:  Google’s in a world of trouble and it needs to repair its reputation. …

Google China Part Two: Complying with the law

By Shabbir | February 3, 2006 | Comments Off on Google China Part Two: Complying with the law

The criticism of Google’s China version is emotion-filled but accurate.  I don’t mean to imply that a lot of smart and caring people at Google didn’t think hard about a way out of this quandry, only that they chose to draw the line in the wrong place. If you read enough editorials, the critics’ arguments…

Google China Part One: Keeping Mail and Blog Services Out Of The Oppressors’ Hands

By Shabbir | February 2, 2006 | Comments Off on Google China Part One: Keeping Mail and Blog Services Out Of The Oppressors’ Hands

There’s been so much criticism over Google China, it would be impossible not to examine it as a case study for any number of things.  I will address the larger debate over the complicity with censorship, but wanted to touch on a point that has been overlooked by many of Google’s critics: Google’s decision not…

How to fix Google’s PR mess

By Shabbir | January 31, 2006 | Comments Off on How to fix Google’s PR mess

This is a three part essay I wrote about Google’s PR woes and how to fix them: Part One: Keeping Mail and Blog Services out of the oppressor’s hands Part Two: Complying with the law Part Three: Digging out of your own hole I’m posting this as a placeholder for the entire series.