2. "The Skylanders series has existed for less than three years, but in its 27 months is has made over $2 billion at retail."
3. Charlie Stross says we should encourage wealthy corporations to fund airship settlements on Venus:
A balloon or Zeppelin full of human-breathable air would actually float as well in the troposphere of Venus as a hydrogen balloon does on Earth. "At cloud-top level, Venus is the paradise planet," as Geoffrey Landis puts it. More here, with links to papers in the footnotes: let's just say that my money would be on a million people living in the clouds of Venus being both cheaper and faster to achieve than getting a million people living on or below the surface of Mars.