White Day

The 14th of March marks the ‘White Day’. In Japanese culture, women, especially students, give chocolates on Valentine’s Day to a boy they care for. Also, girls often give chocolates to people close to them without any romantic attachment, this chocolate is called ‘Giri-Choco’ which means ‘Obligatory Chocolate’. A month after Valentine’s is White Day, which means it’s time for the boy to return the gift, this act is called ‘Sanbai-gaeshi’, meaning ‘Triple Return’. As the name says, the boy has to give a gift three times more valuable than the girl’s gift.

No one knows for sure how White Day appeared, still, in the midst of a sea of theories there’s one that sticks out. It says in 1965, a marshmallow maker advertised men should repay Valentine’s chocolates with marshmallows. So, for some time this day was called the ‘Marshmallow Day’.

When chocolate companies realized the potential income this day offered, they come up with the idea of selling white chocolate, so as to incite men to present women with white chocolate along with other presents.

This holiday is also celebrated in Korea and is gaining popularity in Hong-Kong, in spite of being just a day of marketing purpose. The first time I heard about this holiday was on ‘Love Hina’, a Japanese manga (or comic book or graphic novel) and I felt it was a great thing Portugal doesn’t care about it, or else I’d spent a lot of money (I’m lying, I wouldn’t receive chocolates on Valentine’s, so it’d be the same).

"Selective" memories and Historical revisionism..

[After urging you to post it would be utterly hypocritical not to post something... and of all things I chose the following, grave post about historical revising (or revisionism or revision, I know not the exact correspondence...). I must be losing my mind :-P]
[ I'd also like to thank Dubeth for pointing out some errors, typos, and telling me the word was revisionism - your editing was much appreciated!]

This picture, made by el "roto", and published in Spain's El País says :
"Don't trust your historical memory
We will tell you what you['ll] remember"
[The picture is copyright, you must not make money out of it, et cetera and so on and so forth...]

We all know what a "selective memory" is. We see people with it every day on the news, from politicians and entrepreneurs, to criminals and liars - it is also a "condition" many honest people with fear for their lives seem to suffer from.

"Historical revisionism" is little more than taking what one knows about the past and tailoring it to the present agenda - if changing the facts, twisting the truth, omitting critical information and outright lying are required, so be it.

One case of both is the obituary most media presented on former US President Gerald Ford, deceased on December 2006. Now, "Respect for the dead" has been a tradition since our most distant ancestors started burying the departed (it was recently discovered it was first done in Australia) but the insidious agreement made with Indonesian dictator Suharto regarding East Timor, on Henry Kissinger's advice, is an historical shame that went completely unmentioned.
(For additional info check this article - Gerald Ford and East Timor - on the most peculiar blog I've come across: Martini Republic)

What the example above indicates, and the picture illustrates so well, is a tendency to trade Historical truth for comfortable - or convenient - fallacies. Fabrications that might be perceived as factual if repeated enough times, like the writer said.

Such is the case, for example, when dictators receive state honours or military funerals when they die - there is no clear an example as Pinochet's, who was behind the murder of 3 Ministers of Defense before finally orchestrating the assassination of the President of Chile and installing a regime of fear; you disregard all the crimes, all the victims and all the suffering of their families. The "selective memory" of some of those called to the stand - figuratively or literally - perpetuate a feeling of injustice and steal our right to, if not justice and truth, peace and memory.

Knowledge is power, the old adage goes. I don't believe it anymore - everyone remotely informed knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (let's not go into discussions about the American role in the Middle East - a thousand books wouldn't suffice) and it still wasn't enough; the death of Anna Politkovskaya in Russia is a different case of the same sort.

What I do believe is verified information and unadulterated memory are indeed our only possible defense from lies and information overload (should I also say "spin-doctoring"?). Our personal experiences and an active and critical citizenship "against" a corrupt world seem too little, too late; hence why we must share information, experiences and knowledge (which requires education and freedom of speech and press) never letting ourselves fall into indifference, nor, above all, the hands of men and women like those in El Roto's illustration..

[As always, it goes without saying so I won't repeat it, feeback is encouraged and valued]

Global Warming

Many efforts are being set to reduce the catrastophics events that are close to occur as consequence of climate change: Australia is banning the use of incandescent light bulbs, western states of America are planning to cut their states emissions of gases...While others as Mr. Al Gore proclaim the reduction of the use of electricity when in fact his electricity bill is the most expensive among the average of the upper class families! What can we infer from this? Are all this measures being adopted as an hypocritical way to say "My country is doing its utmost to prevent the end of an inhabitable planet!" I reckon that this is not a race between countries or even continents to see which has the best scores, but more a question of whether they are accomplishing their results. The well being of a planet is at stake! And your country could be, indeed, the next to suffer the consequences of global warming.