Man, I’d heard about DARPA’s new contest — the “Autonomous Ground Vehicle Challenge,” whereby they’re offering a “cash prize” to whoever can build the fastest robot to self-guide itself from L.A. to Las Vegas in 2004. And I knew that it was intended to help foster autonomous-vehicle technology, so that the military has ever more ways to send hunks of deadly metal — instead of real-live soldiers — into Arab nations, so we can kill real live Arabs without endangering ourselves. But whatever, I still think it’s a cool contest.

The thing is, the splash page for the contest looks almost eerily like a video-game box in Wal-Mart. Who designed this thing?

(And now that I think about, what the hell kind of metaphoric import are we supposed to get from a race that has robots fleeing L.A. for Vegas?)