Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: “More people are smoking e-cigarettes, but as a quitting tool, they may be all smoke and mirrors.” All smoke and mirrors?

My comments:

More people are smoking e-cigarettes, cigarettes that taste tobacco-like but presumably with little, less or no nicotine, but if you want to quit smoking altogether, e-cigarettes may not help.

At least not as much as they’re made out to be.

At least, I mean, that’s what we can infer from “smoke and mirrors”.

“Smoke and mirrors” is a relatively new phrase (1980-85, Dictionary.com). They originally refer to the smoke and mirrors on the stage where a magician performs one of his/her tricks.

The magician, you see, comes on stage. The light turns on. The audiences see spumes of smoke billowing from everywhere. And there are mirrors everywhere, reflecting the smoke to make the scene look even more smoke-filled and kind of choking and bewildering.

And that’s the very idea. The mirrors and smoke are going to be very helpful to the magician – They help distract the attention while he/she performs his tricks.

If the magician does their job right, the audience will all be mesmerized and marvel at how the magician’s got it done right in front of their eyes.

All because of the smoke and mirrors, you see. In other words, all the smoke and mirrors help the magician hide what he/she is really doing.

Smoke and mirrors, you see, stand for deception, something that blurs or distorts facts, figures and so forth – even though they do seem to add to the atmosphere, like on the magician’s stage.

In our example, e-cigarette marketers apparently tout their product as a quitting tool, helping smokers quit their bad habit. But that may not be the case. A lot of people who smoke e-cigarettes keep smoking the real thing as well. Hence, e-cigarettes as a quitting tool is accused here of being a mere marketing scheme, like a magician’s trick, to help them sell more e-cigarettes.

In other words, all smoke and mirrors.

Or just a smoke screen, to use an older phrase involving “smoke”.

Alright, here are media examples of “smoke and mirrors”:

1. Just as the game’s new magician Marcos Baghdatis seemed set to disappear in a puff of the smoke that rose from the nearby Australia Day fireworks, he found one more trick up his sleeve.

And so, after yet another incredible, fighting five-set victory, this time over David Nalbandian, the Cypriot will become one of the most unlikely Australian Open finalists in the tournament’s long history.

But clearly not, on the mounting evidence, one of its least talented. Adding the scalp of the fourth-seeded Nalbandian to those of No.2 Andy Roddick and No.7 Ivan Ljubicic, Baghdatis has taken the hard road to the final, proving along the way that the success of the man who waves his racquet like a wand is not just smoke and mirrors.

Last night, however, it was the 20-year-old’s big heart that proved his greatest weapon in a gutwrenching 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory. Trailing by two sets to love, and then by 0-2 in the fifth set, he fought tenaciously, producing a blistering array of shots that brought his fans to life and subdued his tough opponent.

Then, even as he seemed to have moved within sight of victory, Baghdatis was forced to endure one more test. Serving at 5-4 and 15-15, heavy rain began to fall. The players left the court with the Cypriot lifting his eyes to the heavens as if to say, “Why me?”

However, 25 minutes later, with the roof closed and the courts dried, he returned to complete another famous, uproarious victory - though only after yet more drama. On match point, Baghdatis hit a winner only to have the call of “in” over-ruled by the umpire.

Then, finally, he smacked an ace, crumpling to the court on his knees in a mixture of exaltation and relief. While throughout the tournament he had leapt about, hugging his supporters, this time, for a moment he held his head in his hands, trying to comprehend the magnitude of his achievement. That could take some time.

“It’s just amazing and I have to wake up I think because it is unbelievable,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. It is just amazing.”

- Marcos the magician into final, Sydney Morning Herald, January 27, 2006.

2. Keira Knightley does her best at appearing less ethereal in her latest interview with Marie Claire, but she can’t quite escape the spotlight.

As a screen star and fashion icon, Knightley has only garnered more attention over the years. The striking actress has enjoyed versatility in her roles, playing everything from “The Duchess” to “Domino.”

Despite her success, Knightley indicates she takes it all with a grain of salt.

“My career is on the verge of being ridiculous all the time; it’s all smoke and mirrors,” she tells the mag, out on newsstands Feb. 12.

But with her scope of films, the 29-year-old star remains one of Hollywood's leading young ladies. She’s been a muse to some of the biggest names in fashion, including Chanel head designer Karl Lagerfeld.

“I like the fantasy of fashion,” Knightley said. “Creating a different person and dressing up like her.”

- Keira Knightley gets real: My career is ‘a(chǎn)ll smoke and mirrors’, NYDailyNews.com, February 4, 2013.

3. News reaches AVPT Towers today that the behemoth that is News Corp is launching a tablet computer aimed at US schoolchildren, called Amplify. This is the sort of thing that fills A Very Private Tutor with something approaching a high level of dread. AVPT has often tried to teach its pupils with a tablet computer, resulting in the following:

1) Tablet computer runs out of battery. OK, this may be AVPT’s fault, but even so. It’s annoying.

2) Whilst AVPT pops to loo, child appropriates tablet and begins to play game in which plants defend themselves against zombies. AVPT then has to spend several minutes coaxing tablet off child.

3) Tablet fails to connect to internet, resulting in lack of available materials.

4) Tablet unaccountably freezes.

5) Child, delighting in the touch screen, keeps touching it. And touching it. And touching it, so that the amount of time spent on whatever it is you're meant to be doing is limited.

And so on. What is most frightening about this announcement is that the tablet will “use the language of the internet” – smiley faces and sad faces, thus removing all nuance from a response. It will know if a child isn’t paying attention, warning users to keep their eyes on the teacher (how scary is that?) More worrying is that children will be able to use it to play games – such as one in which “Tom Sawyer battles the Bronte sisters.”

...

The fact of the matter is that a room full of pupils staring at tablets is not going to be able to concentrate as well as if they simply had books. When I’ve done lessons with classrooms and laptops, a good part of the time was spent waiting to log on or charging up the laptops etc. And that’s not even to mention the classic excuse – “I’ve lost my tablet” – carries a lot more problems with it when a school’s spent a couple of hundred pounds on it then on a simple textbook.

This seems to me like the electronic whiteboard (which, in my experience, break or freeze at every available moment.) Sure, they look snazzy when parents come round the school. But they don’t make the thing that’s meant to be happening any better: and that’s teaching. Technology is smoke and mirrors: and here, quite dangerous smoke and mirrors. Let’s not succumb to its temptations.

- Tablets in the classroom? It's all smoke and mirrors, Telegraph.co.uk, 08 March 8, 2013.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: [email protected], or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

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