TJHSST's 2010 Beautybot winner with his cockroach pal.

When considering this month's $1,000 charitable donation, we looked to the future. And the future is bleak for us meatsacks.

With all the recent innovations in singing, juggling, and Jeopardy-pwning robots, we realize it's only a matter of time before we'll be bowing to our new cybernetic overlords.

So we thought it would be prudent to butter them up while they're still prototypes, and to make sure our support didn't fall into the wrong hands. Skynet, we're looking at you.

Thus we've just donated $1,000 to FIRST, an educational nonprofit whose acronym stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." You may be most familiar with their FIRST Robotics program and competitions; we've pitched in to local Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology's competition the last few years, and we've prioritized our boxes of Borked Stuff for FIRST teams.

How could we not support an organization that provides a fun, accessible way for kids to get their hands dirty with design, programming, and the magic of soldering? Who knows--maybe our donation will go towards the development of another Grant Imahara, who has mentored for FIRST, which means more BattleBots, which means more swinging arms of robotic death, which means... actually, maybe this isn't such a great idea.

Please don't hurt us, Geoff.