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I was going on a bit of a wikibinge just now and ended up at the Dada Manifesto. Dada is, of course, the anti-art movement that spawned out of the disgust of World War I, and is characterized by absurdism, nihilism, and the rejection of standards of art.

Reading the Dada Manifesto I was struck dumb. The Nintendo Wii is the video game system for Dadaists! Here’s the first paragraph of the Dada Manifesto:

Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means “hobby horse”. In German it means “good-bye”, “Get off my back”, “Be seeing you sometime”. In Romanian: “Yes, indeed, you are right, that’s it. But of course, yes, definitely, right”. And so forth.

Here’s the Wii version:

Wii is a new tendency in video games. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone on the Internet will be talking about it. Wii comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means “yes”. In English it means “you, me, and everybody”. Korean: “up”, “top”. And so forth.

So there you have it. Expect a resurgence of Dadaism in the form of Wiiism.

The FIA has announced that Prodrive will be the 12th Formula 1 team in 2008. Led by David Richards, Prodrive isn’t a fly-by-night operation. Richards is, of course, the former Team Principal of BAR (now Honda) and also the holder of commercial and television rights of the World Rally Championship. Prodrive also runs the Subaru World Rally Team.

A twelfth team is welcome. More cars generally leads to more excitement. As is seen with the recent addition of Super Aguri, it can also lead to more controversy, as new teams often have to rely upon untested and underexperienced drivers. Super Aguri were lucky in that Takuma Sato was available, but Yuji Ide has been a dire selection so far. Richards’ experience in the motorsport world, coupled with his “big name” status, will likely lead him to be able to select two racers that are heaps above the likes of Ide. Perhaps Anthony Davidson can finally get a proper drive? Richards knows Davidson, as their time at BAR overlapped between 2002 and 2004. 2008 is an awfully long way away in the Formula 1 world, and Davidson may get a proper drive before then.

Another thing that points to Prodrive not duplicating the “success” of Super Aguri is the timeline. Super Aguri had about six months to come up with a car, and they had to resort to using a three-year old Arrows chassis (one of which sat in Melbourne Airport as a showcar before being raced by Ide). Prodrive has a year and a half to come up with a car. The extra year should allow them to not only develop a chassis (or modify an older model), but also have drivers to run tests on the car, not only to allow the drivers to become familiar with it but also to allow the team to work out the kinks in racing a car.

I only hope that the Prodrive colour scheme doesn’t hinge upon black, red, and white.

Nintendo’s next console has, up until now, been called the Nintendo Revolution. While some may say that “Revolution” is a stupid name because the console is far from revolutionary (other than perhaps its controller), mostly everybody seems to think it’s a decent name.

Well, throw the name out, because Nintendo’s renamed the Revolution. The new name?

Wii.

Pronounced “wee”, Nintendo chose this name because Wii “represents the answer”:

While the code-name Revolution expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer.
Wii will break down that wall that separates videogame players from everybody else.
Wii will put people more in touch with their games… and each other. But you’re probably asking: What does the name mean?
Wii sounds like “we,” which emphasizes the console is for everyone.
Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.
Wii has a distinctive “ii” spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people playing it. And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of videogames that sets it apart from the crowd.
So that’s Wii. But now Nintendo needs you.
Because it’s really not about you or me.
It’s about Wii.
And together, Wii will change everything.

This is both awesome and hideous at the same time. It represents a breakout from the boring naming convention that’s plagued video game consoles since the days of the Atari 2600. While there are the obvious negative connotations surrounding the word “wee”, I think we can all gleefully look forward to headlines on launch day that read “I GOT A HOLD OF A WEE WII” or “WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MY WEE WII?”. For the immature person in all of us this is a great day. A great day indeed.

Today Marc Crawford was fired as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks. The official press release says he was “relieved of coaching duties”.

After finishing the 2005-06 season with a record of 42-32-8, the Canucks missed the playoffs for the first time since the 1999-2000 season. The Canucks have been perennial underachievers in the playoffs, never living up to the hype generated at the beginning of each season. Even though Crawford led the Canucks to a winning record overall, they faltered late in the season to end up three points behind Edmonton.

Some may question the firing of Crawford, Vancouver’s all-time leader in victories with 246. There are two primary reasons why Crawford was fired. The first is the aforementioned underachievement; the farthest they made it in the playoffs under Crawford was to the second round in 2002-03. A shake-up may help, uh, shake things up and spur the Canucks to greater things. The second is that Crawford could be seen as the vestiges of the Brian Burke era, and Dave Nonis, the Canucks’ GM who replaced Burke in 2004, might want to be seen as putting his stamp on the team. Hiring a new coach would be such a stamp.

Look for big moves out of the Canucks in the future, including the obvious trading of Todd Bertuzzi and the not-so-obvious trading of Markus Naslund.

One cool application that I used to use on OS X but don’t any more is SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys. It’s a collaborative text editor that allows you to share documents over your local network (and over the Internet) so that others can edit them alongside you. Alasdair and I used it at the first HTN Workshop to write up notes. I admit that I didn’t use it to its fullest capabilities, but as a basic text editor it’s pretty good. At the time I would have given it four stars, but now…

I’ve stopped using it because I reinstalled my OS when my disk failed, and CodingMonkeys now charges for it. Because of this I feel I have to give it three stars out of five. I now use TextWrangler and emacs as my text editors, depending on the situation.

But MacZOT.com is running what they call BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com, where, if enough people blog about SubEthaEdit, they’ll give away copies for free, so I’m blogging about SubEthaEdit to get it out there for free. Each person who blogs about it reduces its price by $0.05. There are three conditions that I have to fulfil to make this a qualifying entry: two of those are already done, and here’s the third:

MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software.

There you go!