I'm finding it amusing to compare and contrast that blogger's comment

And besides all these things, God gave to men (generally speaking) the ability to grow a beard.

with the passage from Cryptonomicon about beards:

She pulled down statistics on racial variation in beard growth. American Indians didn't grow beards, Asians hardly did, Africans were a special case because daily shaving gave them a painful skin condition. "The ability to grow heavy, full beards as a matter of choice appears to be a privilege accorded by nature solely to white males," she wrote.

I never quite managed to find out exactly how much of that latter paragraph was true in the real world and how much was a subtle – or unsubtle – twisting of the facts to better suit Charlene's argument. (Even if it's all completely untrue, of course, one shouldn't blame Stephenson for poor research; it would be perfectly in character for Charlene to have done her research in a biased way or not bothered to do it at all.) But in any case, part of my brain is itching to put Charlene and Jeff Moss in a room together and let them fight that one out.