Another collection of links

Pandas and Airships and movie stuff. These are some interesting things from the interwebs, that I think that you should probably be aware of. I have a new goal to make this a weekly feature, we'll see how that goes.

Will Pandas save the planet?

It would be funny, and okay, it's not exactly the planet, but this article from io9 explains how an enzyme in Panda stomachs could expand the variety of plants used for biofuel away from valuable crops like corn. But it sounds better to just say that Pandas are saving the planet. Because Pandas are awesome.

Airships making a comeback?

It's probably not a good idea to get your steampunk hopes up, but this article from New Scientist explains that a Canadian company has signed a contract with the UK company Hybrid Air Vehicles for a fleet to used across Arctic Canada. Of course, these are hybrid ships, so they're less cool than their steam-powered cousins, but still, airships.

Netflix-style Movie Pass may become reality

/Film reports on this concept, which had seemed dead out of the starting gate. It allows customers to pay a fixed fee to go to unlimited movies in the cinema every month. There's a good deal of push back from theater owners, but Movie Pass has just partnered with Hollywood Movie Money, and as far as I can tell, this could be a huge bonus for cinemas, since a significant portion of cinema profits come from those incredibly expensive Reeses Pieces and sodas. Anyway, of this pans out, I'll certainly have to consider it.

Showtime and Spielberg to develop Stephen King's Under the Dome

Finally, Steven Spielberg and Showtime appear to getting reading to adapt Stephen King's awesome book Under the Dome into a series. King had previously said he saw the book becoming an HBO miniseries, and this seems to be pretty close. I guess the big question is whether there's a plan to run this for multiple seasons [from /Film]. Like almost all of King's work, Under the Dome is filled with the graphic and extreme content that premium cable seems to be gravitating towards, and Spielberg has shown an ability to lend significant quality to these productions with Band of Brothers and The Pacific, so this could be pretty awesome if it pans out.