Editor’s note: With all the bad news out there, why not bid farewell to the week with an easy-to-digest roundup of our favorite forward looking and generally optimistic stories from the fine folks at The Stimulist. We’re just getting the series started, and would love to hear your feedback, good or bad. Email feedback@takepart.com to let us know what you think.

The twittersphere was buzzing this week with the $847 million sale of online shoe giant Zappos.com to online book giant Amazon.com. Thanks to Twitter-darling and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, the online shoe store has become one of the fastest growing online retailers since almost going the way of Pets.com on the cusp of the late-’90s dot-com bust. Hsieh’s secret? A dedication to customer service (imagine that!) and a company culture that makes your office look like “Office Space” without Milton. Zappos offers free return shipping for a year, is known for surprising customers with next-day delivery upgrades, and features a round-the-clock staff of real, unscripted customer service agents. “It’s clear that Amazon’s purchase of Zappos wasn’t about getting their warehouses or their stocks of shoes,” quips The Stimulist’s Josh Skolnick. “They paid millions to get Tony Hsieh to teach them how online customer service is done.”

It seems Hsieh might be just as good at selling multimillion-dollar web companies as he is at hawking shoes. Before taking the helm at Zappos, Hsieh walked away from an fledgling web start-up with $265 million of Microsoft’s money (which may be why he can afford to take home a paltry salary of $36,000 even as Zappos approaches $1 billion in sales). In Hsieh’s case, quitters do win–and it’s not all that uncommon if you ask Alicia Menendez.

Over at Google, Vice President Marissa Mayer has also been raising eyebrows with some web innovation of her own. The 34-year-old multi-millionaire with a mid-west upbringing and fashionista tendencies was one of Google’s first employees, and the pioneer behind the now-iconic Google school of minimalist design. Moving to the Silicon Valley start-up with a silly name may have been a major risk for the Stanford Business School alum, but the view from the Four Seasons penthouse that she now calls home can’t be all that bad.

Proving that innovation is not just for web execs, environmental scientists are floating some pretty cool ideas to halt global warming. With “Day After Tomorrow” climate scenarios on the horizon, scientists are turning to extreme geo-engineering measures to raise the earth’s albedo and lower global temperatures. Some of the proposed solutions date back all the way to the Johnson Administration when they believed feats of human engineering (see: the lunar landing) could solve any problem. Blowing seawater into the atmosphere, for instance, might create large, reflective clouds. Giant balloons could be sent up to release reflective particles. Fertilizing oceans with iron could help it absorb more CO2. The yet un-researched effects might do more harm than good, but with science fiction slowly becoming reality, they may be the solution that the world needs.

While Hollywood imaginings of the coming climate apocalypse may be the favored tool of environmental reformers, The Stimulist’s Sean Braswell suggests using a different set of  scare tactics to end squabbles over economic reform. Citing director of intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair, Braswell makes the case that global economic instability may be the single greatest threat to American security. A weakened world economy could hearten rogue nations to act more recklessly as the United States is forced to make cuts to its defense budget. It’s scary, Braswell says, but that’s what makes it a good tool to push through regulatory reform. “The Bush administration was never shy about fear-mongering and citing security concerns to push even the most tangential items on its domestic agenda. When it comes to passing financial reforms, it’s about time the Obama administration tried to scare the hell out of us as well.”

Photo courtesy of Patrick Kiteley’s photostream: Flick’r, Creative Commons