Much to PETA’s relief, ISIS is not, in fact, shaving bears.

In a past age, the American robber baron class would combat bad publicity by building a library or calling in the Pinkertons. Today, Silicon Valley’s captains of industry convince people they’re not a horror-show money vampires simply by growing cool beards.

Tragic news: The cool, understanding beard you got high and told all your troubles to during high school has passed away. The avuncular facial hair that was always down to buy your friends some beer was attached to actor/director Kevin Smith, and appeared in films like Clerks, Mallrats, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It will be missed.

If you see a man sporting permanent stubble, it is appropriate to assume that he has character flaws that are very grave.

Major casting news for Star Wars: Episode VII: the role of Luke Skywalker's beard will be played by Mark Hamill's beard. It appears the beard-learner has become the beard-master, and Luke is the new Obi-Wan.

At 100 years old, there's no doubt that Scott Cleveland's grandmother has seen a lot of things, but the one thing she really wanted to see was her grandson's face underneath his dumb beard.

Pity Paul Roof, the Charleston Southern University associate professor who claims he lost his job after an image of his insane, four-pronged beard showed up on a beer can from a local brewery.

"When I met Taylor and when we got married, he looked like a Backstreet Boy," said Kim, 28, a marketing director at a local airport near Fredericksburg, VA. She meant that as a compliment. You see, her relationship has since been hijacked by her husband Taylor's barbecue-sauce trap of a beard that he grew, "fell in love with," and then launched a Facebook campaign to keep after she told him to get rid of it. He kept it and named it Beardimus Maximus.

Great news if you can't grow a beard and have a few thousand dollars to spare: "Facial hair transplants" are reportedly on the rise in New York.

Procter & Gamble revealed Friday afternoon that one of their biggest financial challenges this year will be your disgusting, dirty face. Reanimating the lifeless corpse that is the word "hipster," the consumer company in charge of Colgate, Johnson & Johnson, and Gillette (among others), reported stagnating sales in their typically thriving "grooming market."

Known to fans as Mr. Incredibeard, San Francisco native Isaiah Webb promises fellow beard enthusiasts one new beard style every Monday — or "Monbeardday," as he obviously calls it.

Men: they are wearing beards now. Why? The WSJ's Tina Gaudoin has a theory:

Two gems from The New York Times' story about Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier on a "quixotic" mission to find out everything about Osama bin Laden's last days:

Remember Matisyahu, the Hasidic rapper? Or, I guess, reggae singer? You know, the guy with the big beard? Had that one song? Kinda big on the jam-band circuit for a minute in the mid-2000s? Got it yet? Well, he shaved his beard today and posted a photo on Twitter. And then he posted this to his website:

Tom Offer-Westort used to be a guy with a big shaggy beard and shoulder-length hair. Now, he's... not. Luckily for the internet, his friend, filmmaker Peter Simon, made sure he did the big shave "in style," and created this nice little video—kind of a Vimeo Peanut-Butter Solution—of the event. Enjoy it, before Norelco turns it into an ad. [via Reddit]

If you see a woman with a beard drawn on her face, arrest her! Immediately! She may have just robbed two banks in Alabama. And ignore her bomb threat, too.

Our favorite story of 2011—"Man Eats His Own Beard at Knifepoint Over Botched Lawnmower Sale"—may soon come to a conclusion, with the aggressors thrown in jail for failing to pay the $570 restitution ordered by the court.

Why is no one asking about the United States' humiliating failure to compete in the robots-with-facial-hair race? Though American scientists were at the forefront of the bearded robot revolution, a new collaboration between the Japanese company Geminoid and Danish professor Henrik Scharfe has produced the first-ever robot with a goatee (to the best of our knowledge). This is Geminoid DK, modeled on Dr. Scharfe. You should be nice! Someday, "barber for robot" will be the only job left for humans. The ones whose bodies aren't being harvested for energy by the global robo-consciousness, that is! [Geminoid DK]

Ricky Coates documented the entire year that he didn't shave with a portrait a day. Watch the video of his transformation from clean cut dude to ZZ Top band mate.

On last night's Letterman, Jake Gyllenhaal discussed his beard. Yes, his beard. And the brotherhood...of bearded men. Jake's take on the publicity his facial hair received last summer, inside.