A touching and thoughtful obituary from Salon, focusing on his Hollywood career.

Rocks that are arguably Earth's most ancient, with an age of 4.28 billion years, have been found on the shores of Hudson Bay, Canada. According to this story, the sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any rocks known and may even hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms – if so, it will be the earliest evidence of life on earth.

'Bonfire of the Vanities' author Tom Wolfe writes an opinion piece on the US credit crisis and the escape hatch employed by the men that have assisted in causing it: "The hottest, brightest, most ambitious young men began abandoning investment banking in favor of hedge funds six years ago. Your correspondent can describe scenes of raging carotid-aneurytic anger as the young hotshots resigned."