Adults Are Just Obsolete Children and the Hell with Them

The title of this post is a quote by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, about writing for adults. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of Dr. Seuss' death, and I figured I'd make note of it. I grew up reading The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Yertle the Turtle, There's a Wocket in My Pocket!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and other classics.

I don't have a lot to say on the subject, but I thought I'd share this video from Saturday Night Live shortly after his death. Sadly I can't embed the video here, but it is well worth one and a half minutes of your time to enjoy Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs and Ham as if it were a religious sermon. Yes, it's really him, and it is very funny.

By the way, if anyone tries to tell you that you're supposed to pronounce Seuss as if it rhymed with "Joyce", tell them they're dumb. The "Seuss" in "Theodore Seuss Geisel" is indeed pronounced "Soyce", but the "Seuss" in "Dr. Seuss" is supposed to be "Soos", to rhyme with "Mother Goose". The anglicization is correct in this case. Now you can annoy the rare person who might correct you on that by being nerdier than them!

Bilgeous Bogwallow

Just a quick post to prove this blog is still alive. I am very busy with school, and since I am a glutton for punishment I decided it would be a good idea to volunteer to compile all the field camp maps into one map to present at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

This year I am taking second semester chemistry, Applied GIS, Old Testament, a physics lab that is insultingly dull (think sixth grade physics) and a technical writing class as well as participating in the Trombone master class again. This semester will either force me to learn to manage my time efficiently or kill me. Or both.

I may post more on some classes later if there is anything worth posting, but for now I will just share an assignment from my technical writing class. Today in class we split into groups to practice writing effective paragraph transitions. To do this, Professor Williams had each group take a paragraph he'd written that began a ridiculously silly story and each member of the group was to come up with a paragraph, in turn, that continued the story. I typed it all up as we went. The next step was to improve the transitions between paragraphs, the challenge being that each paragraph had a different author. Our final result was more ridiculous than even I could have predicted. It is bad. Hilariously bad. Maybe you won't think so, but I think so. I actually contributed two paragraphs to the story. Here it is in its entirety, with the first paragraph being provided by Professor Williams, and my two paragraphs in orange:

Bilgeous Bogwallow was a very pretty little girl with an unfortunate name. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bogwallow, felt there was something poetic about the way it sounded when spoken aloud, which is why they settled on “Bilgeous” in the first place. “It trips nicely off the tongue,” her father said when Bilgeous first started to complain. “No Bogwallow could ask for better.” Bilgeous, who had endured an endless stream of taunting and ridicule since the day she entered kindergarten, couldn’t have disagreed more. One afternoon, as a crowd of third-graders chanting “Bilgeous Bogwallow boils bunions” pelted her with clumps of dirt and grass, Bilgeous decided that it was time for a change.

Bilgeous’ face flushed red with hatred as the chants grew louder. Bilgeous decided she didn’t like the way Jimmy looked. She thought Jimmy looked like a frog, and to the children’s surprise, he began to grow green. It started with his hair and spread down his face. Warts sprung up all over his skin.

As his dramatic transformation drew to a close, the crowd began to realize what had happened, and came out of their stunned silence. “She turned him into a newt!” Cried a student. Before long the other children had tackled Bilgeous to the ground, and were yelling accusations of witchcraft and devilry, attracting the attention of a nearby teacher, who came over to see what the ruckus was about. The teacher could not have known what she was in for.

To the surprise of everyone, Harry Potter came flying in on his Nimbus 2000 and turned the boy back to a normal boy. He told Bilgeous that she shouldn’t use magic in such a way. Then Harry told Bilgeous that she should come to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn true magic. From nowhere, Draco Malfoy appeared and returned Jimmy to his newtish form, prompting a duel between Harry and Draco over Bilgeous and Jimmy.

Dumbledore appeared with a loud crack, broke up the fight, and confiscated Draco’s and Malfoy’s powers for having used them inappropriately. He then called everyone’s parents and told them of this dreadful event. Then Dumbledore changed Bilgeous’ name to Minerva McGonnagal, so she would never be made fun of again.

Unexpectedly, Minerva decided with her newfound powers Bilgeous was a fine name after all, and hurled a powerful curse at the school which promptly disappeared, leaving nothing but a crater. From then on, Bilgeous was known as a hero for ending the tyranny of school forever!

So there you have it. Yes, most of the characters from Harry Potter make appearances. No, this does not fit the Harry Potter canon, nor is it endorsed in any way by J.K. Rowling. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't, well, you read it, you can't unread it!

Save the Hot Dogs

School is about to start again. Even though it's technically only been six weeks since I was in class, that didn't feel much like school since the class was Field Camp, and the classroom was several locations in Idaho and Wyoming, where we camped and made geologic maps. If I weren't too lazy to keep this blog constantly up to date, the entry on Field Camp would have come a month ago, but I am and it didn't. You'll have to deal with it being out of order chronologically. Deal with it.

That being said, though the first day of the semester is Thursday, for a few of us it started last Monday. If you are one of my nearly half a dozen loyal readers, you will remember a post from last year about a field trip I took prior to the semester's start. I took that same field trip this year, but as a TA instead of a student. So this year, I got to visit the same places and see the same views, but instead of paying the tuition and being graded on my notes and quizzes, I got paid to go. All I had to do was drive, cook, and answer geology-related questions from the students. Not a bad deal.

The trip was a lot of fun. There were twelve students in total, six in my van, including my younger brother who is also a geology major. Since it is the same trip as last year, I will only cover a couple highlights. We missed out on Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone due to road construction, meaning we had to detour through the park to get to our first real stop. We saw buffalo on the road. I took pictures, but I had to take them with my brother's camera since mine drowned. I'll upload them to a follow-up post later.

The most memorable night was Tuesday night, when we camped at Boysen Lake near Riverton, WY. It started with a student reciting the entire plot of Avatar, and ended with everyone getting soaked. Also, it was chili night, but that's not important. The weather was clear enough every night that many of us, myself included, slept out under the stars. This class had used this campsite every year for five years, but this year camped at the other end because our usual spot was in use. Turns out this end has sprinklers. We didn't worry, though, since the camp host said the first of them went off at 10am, and we camped away from those. I set up my sleeping bag and blankets on a nice, comfortable picnic table, read for a bit, then went to sleep listening to my iPod.

At 1:15am, the sprinklers came on. I jumped up, grabbed my bedding, and took it to the dry road. Then I realized my iPod was under the picnic table, getting soaked. I ran back and rescued it (it is fine), and then helped move the two tents that were getting pummeled by sprinklers. The next morning we asked the camp host why it happened, and apparently a ranger had done maintenance on the system and accidentally set the sprinklers for am instead of pm. Oops. Still, it makes me wonder whose bright idea is it to have sprinklers at a campsite anyway. Sure, it was very green, but they were watering mostly weeds. Plus, even if they come on in the afternoon, what if you wanted to camp there for a week? You'll still get soaked unless you strike camp every day. Not the greatest idea ever.

Also, I lost my pillowcase.

There was another memorable moment, this time happening in the van I was driving. This one involves politics, and to those of you who get bored with this subject, please know that it is more important than it ever was, and the facts related in this discussion may be surprising to you.

There is a student in the class who is very intelligent, very funny, a great guy, but also very liberal, and he rode in the back of my van. My brother knew how this guy was with politics, having attempted a debate with him before, but I only knew he was left-leaning. A few of us got into a discussion of socialism, global warming, and health care, talking about the ridiculous things Congress is trying to shove down our throats. All through the discussion, my brother was bracing himself for the explosion he knew was coming.

The trigger was hot dogs. When I made the claim that there are political forces who want to ban hot dogs, a previously silent voice suddenly boomed out from the back of the van, "Excuse me, but that is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard!"

"What?" I said.

"They want to ban hot dogs? Where do you get your sources, the YouTube comments? Did you find this out at imafreakingidiotretardedconsipiracytheorist.com?" said this student, who continued in this same vein with hardly a breath for several minutes as I tried to interject reasonable arguments with real sources into the debate. The rest of the van was laughing very hard at this unexpected outburst of entertainment. The student kept saying things like "Who is this 'they'? Is there a secret panel of government officials who say 'let's take away hot dogs'? Do the hot dog gnomes come into your house at night and steal your beef franks?" (He didn't really say that last one, but it's on par with the other comments.) The best part came as I was trying to explain who "they" is, and finally as he asked again "who is this they?" my brother and I in unison said "CONGRESS!"

It's true. For serious. The student tried to point out how ridiculous this claim is, and I have to agree with him. It is ridiculous. I never thought I'd come to a point where I would ever with a straight face be able to utter the phrase "Congress wants to ban your hot dogs". In fact, at this point in American history, it is my opinion that the most patriotic thing you can do for your country is hoard up a stash of ammunition, incandescent light bulbs, and hot dogs. And I'm not even joking.

Real quick here, for those of you who don't believe me, here are the facts. There is a lobbyist group called The Cancer Project who has a press release with the following headline: "Doctors Seek to Ban Hot Dogs and Similar Meats from School Lunches; Federal Petition for Rulemaking Filed with USDA Just Before National School Lunch Week". So there's a major lobbyist group trying to get the USDA to ban hot dogs, citing studies that say it increases your chances of colorectal cancer (that's butt cancer, if you didn't know). One of the doctors involved in the petition says that "This would be a valuable first step toward encouraging the elimination of processed meat from the diet of all consumers."

What? I'm a consumer! He wants to tell me I can't eat hot dogs or bologna anymore? What right does he have? Sure, it's not the healthiest thing, but whose right is it to say I'm not allowed to eat it? For any given food, processed or otherwise, there are dozens of studies that say it will kill you next week, and dozens more that say it helps prevent something else that will kill you. For example, apparently the blue dye in M&Ms can help with spinal cord injuries!

In my opinion, it makes no sense to vilify the diet and lifestyle of Americans as getting worse and worse when contrary to what you'd expect if that were true life expectancies are getting better and infant mortality is down. I think that means we're doing something right. So eating a hot dog per day makes you a bit more likely to develop colorectal cancer. What about the benefits? Could it be that the nutritional benefits for people who can only afford processed meat outweigh the risks, especially considering that they can't often afford quality meat?

It's the same with fruit. I don't have the reference on-hand, but I read it in a brilliant book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg, with dozens of scientific references. I highly recommend giving this book a look if you care about environmental issues. The claims are that eating fruit sprayed with pesticides increases the risk of cancer. It turns out that the increased risk of cancer is completely overshadowed by the benefits of affordable fruit for all Americans, who without pesticide-sprayed fruit would be at higher risk for not having fruit at all. That's right, the pesticides increase the risk of cancer negligibly, while the fruit itself helps prevent it quite a bit. Pesticides make the fruit more affordable, and therefore accessible, and therefore reduce the risk of cancer. Incidentally, organic food is actually no healthier than non-organic food. It's a scam.

Banning hot dogs is just the start, though. If they can ban or tax one unhealthy food, why not others? How about soda? Oh, right, they've tried that. New York Governor David Patterson recently proposed an 18% tax on soda, which fortunately was dropped. Congress right now is considering a tax on sugary drinks to pay for the health care plan. Supposedly this will discourage unhealthy habits and reduce health care costs as well, just like eliminating smoking was supposed to do these last few decades. Well, we've cut smoking in half, and have costs gone down? No.

As soon as Congress can decide what is and isn't a healthy diet, and ban or tax what they find inappropriate, our freedom to choose what we eat is gone. That is one of the most sinister things about the health care bill being discussed in Congress right now. It's not about health care, it's about control. A tax on hot dogs, soda, processed cheese, fast food, you name it, along with mandated exercise, is where this particular bit of the bill is headed. In fact, they want to tax you just for being fat. Yes, I have sources. Here's one, here's another one, and here's yet another one. Even beyond this, if certain diets are punished by Big Government, maybe other lifestyle choices will be, too. This is just the beginning.

Give me hot dogs, or give me death!

100th Post

Guess what? As of this posting, I have written in my blog 100 times. Funny how this comes in the middle of me hardly posting anything at all... I don't really have any special or amazing Earthshaking topic to write about. I figured instead, considering that my audience of loyal followers has drastically increased since I started blogging last year (increased by several hundred percent if you look at it one way, increased from one to three or four if you look at it another way), I will highlight a few of my favorite posts over the last year and a half. Since every single post is brilliant and worth re-reading multiple times, I will have to be very choosy to select only a few to highlight.

So where do I begin? Google Analytics says that my extra-important post about Velociraptor Awareness Day has recently surpassed my post about the threat imposed on mankind by Polar Bears as my most visited post. Both are masterpieces of online journalism if I may say so myself. Also popular are my report on the Apocalyptica concert my wife and I attended, and the one about the health benefits of rhinotillexomania (eating boogers), even though I only mention eating boogers at the end of the post. In fact, this one gets Googled quite a bit, and it's funny to see how many ways people search for it. I bet most of those people leave as soon as they see I start by talking about the Olympics and Hiroshima.

But what are my favorite posts? Other than all of them, here is a top ten best ever posts in my blog, chosen by me, in reverse chronological order:

Pogonology (8/5/2009): Probably my most (as in only) anticipated blog post ever. Photos of my beard from a couple years ago, photos of my extremely huge five-month beard from this year, and interesting photos of me taking it off in stages. My favorite is the Ambrose Burnside look. As a bonus, more pictures of beards I admire than anyone ever asked for!

Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance (5/4/2009): This one mostly makes this list because of how proud I am that I came up with such a clever title for the post, meshing together the names of all four Die Hard movies. I justify putting it in this list because it's an excellent (I say) review of four very good movies.

Velociraptor Awareness Day (4/18/2009): This was just way too fun, and it's fun to see people Google image searching "velociraptor" and ending up here, because I did that search to find those images and put the best ones in this post. I still recommend doing an assessment of your Velociraptor attack preparedness, and joining the Velociraptor Awareness Coalition (VAC) on Facebook. You can never be too prepared.

Apocalyptica (10/26/2008): This is by far the coolest concert I've ever been to, not that I've been to a whole lot of this type of concert. These guys are one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and put on an awesome show, running around on stage with electric cellos, head banging with long hair to speed metal music played on cello. I never thought I could temporarily lose some of my hearing because of cellos, but it's possible. If you don't know these guys, watch some of the YouTube videos in the post (some may be taken off YouTube by now, who knows), and if you do know them, you will still enjoy watching.

Polar Bears: Number One Threat to America! (8/23/2008): This is one of my pet peeve topics, Global Warming. It is one of the four main ways socialists are trying to take over America (the other ways are through government health care, the minimum wage, and the judicial system, though I'm sure there are more ways as well). The science has been pushed aside and drowned in politics, and the issue has been obfuscated to death. It is not, and never has been, about saving the Earth (which does not need saving and we couldn't if we needed to), but about power and control through the redistribution of wealth, and this power is gained by spreading fear and misinformation. This post is still relevant a year later, and will be for years to come, and it was also fun to write. This is a very important issue for every American to be educated on. I like all my political posts, but I try to space them out so this doesn't turn into a purely political blog, and I decided only to put a couple of those posts in my top ten list.

Peace through Superior Firepower (8/6/2008): Another important issue that people tend to be ignorant of. People like to say how horrible it was that we nuked Japan, not knowing how many millions of innocent lives were saved by ending that war as soon as possible with the complete unconditional surrender of Japan being the only viable option. Negotiation only works when you have something to back up your words. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or, as the villain in National Treasure says (roughly paraphrased), "the thing about bluffing is that sometimes you have to be holding all the cards." Saddam Hussein made a bad move bluffing to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when he didn't... it led to the toppling of his evil government and his death (better late than never). The world can only be stable if America is holding all the cards, i.e. has all the weapons.

Good Books and Bad Books (8/2/2008): Another great controversial post, about a topic I absolutely hate but can't get away from: Twilight (I like to pronounce it twih-ligt, like Dwigt). I really, really hate these books. They're not just annoying, they are detrimental to society. I am not happy about the fact that all four books are in my house on my bookshelf, but there's nothing I can do about it. I did, believe it or not, watch the movie, but I haven't reviewed it yet. It wasn't so bad, but is still not the amazing better-than-Harry-Potter thing that everyone says it is (that's what brought it to my attention, is that unforgivable comparison). I'm sure I'll have to see New Moon, but at least I don't have to read any more of the books. I may write more on this in the near future, since I have comments on the movie that I think are interesting and relevant to movie critiquing in general. Meanwhile, I will continue to boycott these books (not ban them, I am against banning these things on principle).

Fun with Global Warming (6/29/2008): This isn't the heavy political post you might think it is, though there's a bit of important social commentary that goes along with it. This is actually a humor post. It's a bunch of unintentionally funny statements from college students who, frighteningly enough, will be future elementary school teachers. This is worth a read if you want a good laugh. I actually have a new batch of these coming in the near future. I think so, anyway...

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart? (6/18/2009) and follow-up (6/19/2008): Another one of my pet peeve topics, the blaming of big, successful corporations for all of America's problems rather than giving them the credit they deserve for making our economy go. I hate hearing good companies made into scapegoats. Wal-Mart, Halliburton, McDonald's, every big oil company ever, etc. Without these companies our economy would grind to a halt, but successes like these threaten the dependence of us common folk on Big Government, the true source of all our problems.

Iceland (5/22/2008), More Iceland (6/19/2008), and More Photos of Iceland (10/11/2008): I am obsessed with Iceland. I will visit there someday. I love the music, I love the geology, and I love the scenery. Björk, Emilíana Torrini, Sigur Rós, múm, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds are all from there, just to name a few amazing musicians. These are quick reads, because all you really have to do is look at the pictures. You won't regret it. I'll probably find more photos of Iceland in the future.

So what is in store for this blog in the near future? Will I succeed in reviving it from its moribund state? I think so. I have many old posts to follow up on with new exciting things to say, and I have several dozen movies I want to talk about. I've also been very frustrated with the prospect of writing a political post, since things are moving along so fast and the destruction of this country by the most America-hating President we've ever had (i.e. the first one, who still hasn't proven he's even a citizen of the country he is governing) is just depressing to think about. I don't know where to start! This health care fight is the most important war our country has ever fought, and we are fighting our own President. We really may become the American Socialist Republic very soon unless Obama's inevitable overreaching happens soon enough. Enough of that... I'll save it for a future post.

Don't worry, if all goes well this blog will be alive and well very soon!

Follow-Up: The Sentencing

Who killed my blog? It seems to be dead. Only six posts in the past three months? My only excuse is that I have been extremely busy with way too many extra important things (I've been playing a lot of Civilization IV lately). So quit complaining. Those pesky Zulu must be dealt with!

If you read the title of this post, you know it is a follow-up to something I've written before. You're probably confused about the other part of the title, though, unless you are one of the two or three people who diligently follow my blog (I am one of those people most of the time). So, now you're asking yourself, "what is he following up on?" or "sentencing for what and for whom?". (Who am I kidding; you're probably saying "who", not "whom", and you're wrong. Dead wrong. I'll deal with you when I finish conquering the Zulu.)

Almost one year ago, last October, I took a field trip to southern Utah (which you can read about here), and when I came back I found out that while I'd been gone I had been involved in an exciting high-speed police chase with shots fired, and I'd missed all the fun (you can read about it here). Not only did I miss out on my own police chase, I apparently missed the sentencing, too (and therefore the sentence!). Here's the story, from the newspaper a couple months ago:

Well, I have something to say, Rexburg Standard Journal. You still have my age wrong, and my middle initial, and my home town. Also, I absolutely do not drive a Silverado. I drive a blue Jeep. And if you ever tried to chase me, I would totally get away. You see, I am very good at Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and I know a few tricks (such as ramming cop cars head-on so they go flying and I speed through the roadblocks). Oh, and I didn't doctor the photo this time, so it totally doesn't look like me. At all. Also, I found more photos from the chase on the internet:

They tried to ram me off the road.

When ramming didn't work, the obvious next step is to try for deadly force.

The article from which I took these pictures said the chase started after a call of a domestic dispute and a pedestrian hit with the car. They found out later that no pedestrians were hit. The article states also that three cars were damaged in the chase: two Rexburg Police cars and one sheriff's car, completely neglecting to count the truck with the bullet through the windshield as a damaged car. Finding out these details, that the Rexburg Police would chase someone for hitting a pedestrian when none were hit, and that standard operating procedure in these cases is apparently shooting at the driver's head instead of the vehicle's tires, really instills in me great confidence in our local police force. It's too bad I missed out on all the action!

Pogonology

This is way overdue (two months overdue!), but I am finally getting around to posting pictures of my beard. In fact, here's a whole post on pogonology!

So, here's the full story. Back in 2004 I decided to grow a beard because I was tired of shaving. I liked the look, but it was uncomfortable; so I was going to shave it off, but my girlfriend (now my wife) liked it and talked me into keeping it. I got used to it, and kept a short beard until starting school at BYU-Idaho, where there is a lame rule against beards. There's no rule against mustaches, so if you want to grow one and look like a pedophile that's just fine, just so long as you don't have a beard. Never mind that Jesus had one, and all of the LDS church presidents from Brigham Young to George Albert Smith, and they're not against church policy... these days apparently they're evil or something. Okay, rant over...

Of course when you shave off a beard, you can't just shave it off... you've got to have some fun with it! So here is my beard as it was when I started school here, and various stages as I shaved it off (these were taken with a really bad camera):

Here's me at the beach in California with a beard a bit shorter than usual. There's a better picture on Facebook, but I can't seem to find it to post here, so here's the next best one.

This is me going for a white trash look, kind of Joe Dirt-ish.

Handlebars!

Cop mustache. Of course I had to grab my Airsoft gun.

Okay, now let's take a short break and watch an educational video about beards (this is worth watching all the way through).

Now back to the beards! Even though while I'm at school I can't technically keep my beard, I decided while I was out on my internship in the oil field I would see what I could do in about five months. So here is the result of neither shaving my beard nor cutting my hair from mid-December to the end of May:

My wife, my beard and me.

Since I did the goatee and handlebars thing last time, and there was so much more beard this time, I decided to go for something different as I shaved it off. The obvious choice was the Ambrose Burnside look! Despite my lack of receding hairline, I pulled it off pretty well, I think:

After that I carefully cut around the mustache, and curled it as best I could for an old west look. I technically could have kept this and been "legal" at BYU-Idaho, but mustaches get in the way of eating, and I prefer the full beard anyway:

This next one may be offensive to some... I couldn't resist trimming the mustache down to an "Adolf Hitler" look. And if I have a Hitler mustache, of course I have to do a Nazi salute, right? If my hair type was slightly more suited to a Hitler mustache, I would be very tempted to keep it just to make a point at how ridiculous the BYU-Idaho facial hair policy really is, since while even a well-trimmed beard is not allowed, any sort of mustache is okay. Here is my Adolf look:

Next time I can grow one I think I'll try for a year and see what happens. Now that I've shown off mine, here are a few other beards that I find impressive:

Óðinn (Odin, the "ð" is pronounced like the "th" in "then"), king of the Norse gods. He is one of my favorite mythical characters, and this is my favorite drawing of him and his awesome beard. A couple random facts: Odin was sometimes called Woden, and Wednesday is a modern version of "Woden's Day", so the modern pronunciation "Wends-day" is inaccurate and much less cool. Also, Odin is the inspiration of popular fictional characters such as Gandalf and Dumbledore, both of whom also have awesome beards.

My other favorite Norse god is Thor. He has a huge hammer, and a huge beard. I'm not sure which is a more effective weapon. Since I know someone will call me on it, this awesome picture with his intimidating mane is technically a picture of the German version of Thor, called Donner (Thunder). I wish I could call on thunder whenever I wanted it! I also wish I had that beard and hair. And build. And hammer.

Here's the other king of the gods, Zeus. The Greeks called him that, but the Romans called him Jupiter. He could also call lightning. My guess is he knew a lightning bolt was ready if all the hairs of his beard stood on end.

Leonardo DaVinci was a cool guy, with a cool beard. He also had a cool hat, but it has nothing to do with the beard.

Socrates (pronounced "so-crayts", for those of you who have never seen Bill & Ted) was very smart, at least partly because of his beard. He is also one of my favorite philosophers (my very favorite is Jack Handey, who I doesn't have a beard but is very funny).

Charles Darwin, another personal hero of mine, for both his beard and his contribution to science. Yes, I believe in natural selection and evolution, and yes, I'm probably going to Hell, but not for my belief in evolution or for growing a beard between semesters at BYU-Idaho. I'm most likely going to Hell for not liking the Osmonds and 90% of the rest of Mormon music.

Ludwig Boltzmann. Look at the photo. What's not to like? He was a physicist from Austria, so he probably had an awesome accent to go with that superb beard and intense facial expression.

Henri Becquerel. He was french, but I won't hold that against him because he discovered radioactivity and has an extra cool goatee.

Karl Marx. This guy is not a personal hero of mine, but I think our President is a fan. He's in this post because he had an awesome look, made complete by a very impressive beard. Ironically, you can buy his book at your local Barnes & Noble, thanks to capitalism.

Another crazy Marxist. With faces like that behind it, you'd think socialism would have been more successful!

Joseph Wilson Swan invented the incandescent light bulb. This is all the more impressive when you consider what a fire hazard that beard must have been in the lab.

Robert E. Lee would probably have lost his war if not for his beard. Oh, wait, I'm thinking of this next guy:

Abraham Lincoln. One of our greatest Presidents, and also one of the greatest chin curtain models.

I should note that the Union general had a pretty sweet beard, too. Here it is at its best.

Saddam Hussein. This is the kind of beard you get when you hide in a hole for a few months. Saddam and his very awesome beard have assumed room temperature thanks to the U.S. military.

You think I'm done? I've got more! As I say, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. More cool people with beards, or at least people with cool beards:

Jerry Garcia of The Greatful Dead. When I had my beard, I was told I looked like this guy. I think I needed longer hair to go with my beard. Also, I can't play the guitar.

Bob Marley was better known for his dreadlocks than his beard, but he had one. I'm mostly using that as an excuse to post this most awesome photo of one of my favorite musicians. I wish I could pull off dreadlocks.

Johan Strauss. His music is somewhat famous, because of his sideburns.

Billy Gibbons. He's on the other end of the musical spectrum from Strauss, but both his music and his beard are famous.

Chuck Norris. I couldn't resist. This is an example of a really funny-looking beard. Then again, he's a funny-looking man. His beard really bothers me, almost to the point of pogonophobia. But not quite.

Robert Jordan. This guy is a real hero of mine, and not just because he makes a beard look good. His real name was James Rigney. When he served in Vietnam he shot down a rocket-propelled grenade headed for the helicopter he's in. He's best known, though, for writing the Wheel of Time series. This series is very long, but very good, and he died with the final book half finished. Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series from Jordan's notes. Sanderson doesn't have a beard, but he's a good author anyway, and the series should end well.

Orson Welles wrote and directed weird movies. With that beard and extra intense expression he could fit right in with Marx and Trotsky.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had an epic beard. If he hadn't already been dead when he fell off the tower, the wind resistance from the beard would have saved him. Dumbledore is also one of my all-time heroes, and was my favorite character in the Harry Potter series. My favorite Dumbledore quote, from The Chamber of Secrets: "It is our choices [...] that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Hagrid also had a jealous-making beard.

Gandalf. I can't leave him out, he's another of my favorite fictional characters. My favorite Gandalf quote: "It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

Gimli. He was a short little guy, but had an awesome Viking-style braided beard.

And to wrap this bit up, one of the best beards ever belongs to bass player Leland Sklar:

Okay, so that was probably overkill. What a long post! I had fun doing the research for it, though. I hope it was worth taking the time to read it. Good thing it was mostly pictures!