About Me
Hi. I'm Mike Kane, a Philadelphia guy investing in early stage venture companies. I co-founded Pour Richards as a way to bring interesting people together to talk about ideas. This saved me the enormous trouble of having to be interesting myself.Pages
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Recent Posts
Category Archives: Humor
How to Answer Google’s Interview Questions
Q: Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
A: I don’t have an eight-year old nephew. There is no such thing as a database. What is the next question? Continue reading
Swedish Fish are Made in Canada: And Other Realizations of a Slow Learner
The mother of a dear friend was the most superstitious person I ever knew. She carried a large number of crazy notions with her right up to her death from a bolt of lightning after inadvertently walking under a ladder … Continue reading
Posted in Humor, Life and Family, Observations
Tagged humor, negative numbers, observations, Santa
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How to Get a Cab In New York City
Do not be filled with dread like most first-time riders or many life-long riders. I find the following reflection helpful. Your driver is a professional who has had many, many more serious accidents than the one you’re afraid of at any given instant. Continue reading
What Humor and Sanity Have in Common
So to have someone at McSweeny’s be amused enough by my little scribblings to risk his career and a decent education for his children is an outside stamp of approval of large proportion for me. Continue reading
Posted in Humor, Observations
Tagged Benchley, humor, McSweeney's, Publishing, Sanity, Thurber, Wallace Stevens
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An Open Letter to Santa Claus (With a Copy to Ropes & Gray)
If my happiness means anything at all to you, which it must since you are a holy man, let’s dispense with the moral accounting and talk about the loot I need. I am not going to spend an entire year behaving in a certain way that seems acceptable to an elderly man on a frozen continent whose social circle is a bit dubious if one is to judge from the animated films. I’d ask you please to put away your quaint notions of good and bad and get yourself down the chimney at my place on time. Continue reading
How to change the tree stand after decorating the Christmas tree
It’s self-evident to the thinking man that the proper way to carry out the operation includes a strong winch, a series of pulleys, a corrugated steel rope, and a team of Clydesdales. A gentleman of privilege might also expect to have a pair of robust stage hands, a smoking jacket, and a commanding presence, all topped off with a fine Cuban cigar and a single malt of some distinction. Naturally, I had none of this inventory available to me. Continue reading
Possess a Nice Day: Blog Spam Greetings from Planet Zircon
It surprised me at first that anyone would bother to spam a blog at once as edifying and obscure as my own, but I then learned about tricks these bots use to game the search engine rankings. So I pay … Continue reading
Time Travel Will Not Improve Your Wireless Reception
To suppose that a time traveler, using any cellular carrier, would be able to place a call from the year 1928 to anyone alive today, defies reason. Continue reading
Posted in Humor, Observations
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Why Burning Qurans is a Poor Source of Alternative Energy
The political, religious, and international relations aspects of the proposed mass burning of Qurans have been more than covered in the recent press. But the discussion of its status as a source of green or sustainable energy is strangely absent. … Continue reading