If you woke up after being unconscious for half a decade, what would you want to do?

Evie Branan had been in a coma for five years and when she emerged, the first words out of her mouth were, “I want to go to a Bob Seger concert.”

Well, Ms. Branan got her wish.

This story was posted back in April, but it’s amusing enough to link even now. It’s also interesting to consider that perhaps the strangest thing about losing all the time since 2007 would be seeing the incredible changes in mobile phones.

Border collies aren’t the only household pet with a stipple portrait. Now, the Internet’s own Grumpy Cat has one too, to go along with her new book and movie deal.

Grumpy Cat, Immortalized in the Wall Street Journal

Hilarious stipple portrait or no, I can’t imagine how this becomes a movie.

The economics of marijuana sales in America are fascinating.

Chuck used to sell marijuana in California. But the legalization of medical marijuana in the state meant he was suddenly competing against hundreds of marijuana dispensaries. So he moved to New York, where marijuana is still 100 percent illegal. Since making the move, he says, he’s quadrupled his income.

Though I loathe celebrity gossip and news, it does occasionally provide good fodder for this site. So it is again, with Amanda Bynes, who’s apparently in some trouble. That’s probably putting it mildly, in fact. Frankly, when Courtney Love tells you to “pull it together”, things must be really bad.

For decades, the winner of the Indianapolis 500 race has been presented with a bottle of milk with which to toast his victory. Apparently, prior to the race, the drivers are polled to determine their milk preference.

[Photo credit: Lindsay Czarniak]

It looks like this year’s winner, Tony Kanaan, opted for two percent.

Last week, my pal Scott Simpson provided a helpful comparison to help envision what the purchase price of Tumblr actually meant. However, he can’t write such a beneficial companion piece to every news story. Enter Dictionary of Numbers, a tool which attempts to automatically provide context for large numbers.

A friend of mine, Glen Chiacchieri, has created a Chrome extension to help solve this problem: Dictionary of Numbers. It searches the text in your browser for quantities it understands and inserts contextual statements in brackets.

For instance, here’s what Dictionary of Numbers offers for last week’s story on Guantanamo Bay:

It’s no Cloud to Butt (thank you, Steven Frank, for that one), but it’s similarly entertaining.

Prior to his election in 2009, Barack Obama pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. To date, that has still not happened, though a renewed push for its closure has occurred. Now, instead of closing the prison, the Pentagon is seeking nearly half a billion dollars to maintain and upgrade it.

Over at The Technium, Kevin Kelly has a great piece on how difficult it would be to restart modern society.

Starting a fire without matches is possible, but only after about as much practice as it takes to become an expert at a video game.

Don’t miss the ending, where Kelly explains why a clear view of the future does not mean that future is close.