Does a beard make the man? It depends on who you ask. Historically, beards were used for warmth, intimidation of protection from enemies, but in modern times, women find beards only about two-thirds as attractive as a clean-shaven man. In Colorado, beards can be a seasonal look for the October-March snow, but are also worn year-round in homage of the pioneers who settled this land. (Or perhaps beards are really hip in some social circles.) Learn more about beards with the below infographic, then work on turning that stubble into a face rug everyone will look upon with envy.

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No Shame Productions

Jeremy Make and Andy Raney stand with Christine, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of vintage golf karts.

In December, we caught up with Andy Raney and Jeremy Make, the local co-creators of kART Across America, a documentary devoted to their 108-day trek across the United States in a fussy, broken-down golf kart named Christine. On Thursday, Michael Moore caught up with them -- on NPR. In a Talk of the Nation spot devoted to navigating the changes in Oscar rules for feature documentaries, the veteran filmmaker spoke to Make about the implications for artists with smaller financial backing.

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Good news, everyone! If you love Futurama and beer, then you should check out "All Glory to the Hypnoquiz: an all-Futurama Event" at Rackhouse Pub tonight at 8 p.m. Sponsored by Geeks Who Drink, this pub quiz will involve teams competing (showing off) with each other to answer trivia questions about all six seasons of Futurama--and the four movies. And it's my personal mission to think of the best name for my quiz team.

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Like all of us, Skype began as a mere twinkle in the eye of its creators. In less than ten years, it had matured into a beautiful adult. Skype has made its Swedish, Danish and Estonian parents proud, with its latest life accomplishment -- you guessed it -- being sold for $8.5 billi to Microsoft.

But, as the below infographic shows, Skype wasn't always so lovable. It wasn't until Skype's older brother, Kazaa (you remember it, right?) went to prison that Skype came to exist in the first place.

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Well, it looks pretty ominous.

It was partially by coincidence and partly by design that the opening credits of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining had just started rolling when we flipped on the TV Saturday night in our room at the Stanley Hotel; the movie, of course, is based on Stephen King's novel by the same name, which in turn was famously inspired by the writer's one-night stay at the Stanley -- evidently, the movie plays in an endless loop on channel 42. Which was cool, because the closest thing we found to a haunting was Estes Park is like a ghost town after about 8 o'clock on Saturday night. The ghosts, we guessed, were in the main hotel -- maybe the Manor House, where we got roomed, just doesn't have as many.

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Stand back, world.

For proof that a lifelong obsession with trivia will win you literally tens of dollars and a modest measure of short-lived semi-fame, look no further than Jeopardy! tomorrow night, when Geeks Who Drink editor Christopher Short will throw down in representation of Denver's community of nerds with an impressive ability to retain useless facts (actually, Short lives in Indiana, but Geeks Who Drink is Denver-based, so we'll take what we can get). He's contractually obligated to remain mum with regard to his performance on the show, but it's a pretty elite squad of folks who actually make it on the air, so just the appearance is pretty impressive of itself.

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Fuck you, Michael Nutter.

It's well known that Philadelphia is a cultural armpit that has never produced anything of value except for Gilbert Lewis, but the town's community of second-rate trivia geeks is apparently up to speed on random facts as posed by a cross-section of obscure Philadelphia celebrities. Last weekend, a crack trivia team organized by Denver's Geeks Who Drink, fresh off a win for Denver at Geek Bowl V, journeyed to Philadelphia to participate in that city's Quizzo Bowl VII, basically a crappier version of the same event. In geekdom, the rivalry between the two cities is similar in vitriol to the rivalry between the Broncos and the Raiders except more violent, and like the Broncs did last time they faced Oakland, GWD got fucking trounced.

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Kate Levy

It's hard to understand the magnitude of Geek Bowl unless you go. The numbers are readily available: 129 teams, 64 questions, $7,000 in prize money. But none of that gets you to what this thing is like. There's a temptation to imagine a boozier Knowledge Bowl, an almost standardized-testing type atmosphere. That's if you can conceive it at all. Pub quizzes are not a standard part of the American cultural understanding in general, and a pub quiz so large it must be held in a venue who will next host George Clinton just doesn't even make sense. For the second year in a row, I was a Geek Bowl volunteer, and Geek Bowl V was at least twice as ridiculous as Geek Bowl IV.

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See the full Geek Bowl V slideshow.

The 2011 version of the Geeks Who Drink Geek Bowl, the fifth annual granddaddy of useless trivia, went down on Saturday night at the Fillmore Auditorium. The tournament kicked off with a rowdy musical theater performance, where the performers bellowed "Fuck Philly" through motifs of hip-hop, chorus line and gospel, and mariachi band performed during the name-that-song round. The winning team, "The Anti-Social Network" took home a check for $4,000. Photographer Kate Levy brings back these photos. See the full slide show here: Geek Bowl V at the Fillmore.More >>

As is befitting of a the world's biggest bar trivia night, there's been a flurry of questions surrounding the circumstances of Geek Bowl 2011, that hallowed tradition where prestigious geeks from all around the country will gather to do battle tomorrow evening to the end of proving their superior worthless knowledge. Specifically: Are competitor tickets sold out, like Westword told us they were this week? In fact, that was a miscommunication -- the tickets are not sold out. Bad news for us, since we look like a pack of boobs over here, but good news for you: It means there's still time, you lazy, procrastinating bum, to get in on the action.

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