Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians illusions, where magicians use mirrors to accomplish illusions such as making objects disappear, when they really don't disappear at all (thanks wikipedia).
I found a parallel to this metaphor and the current state of earth's environment. Let the over 21 million tons of toxins pumped into our atmosphere a year symbolize smoke. Then the fact that over 71% of the earth contains large bodies of water, basically large natural mirrors. So with that definition our world IS mostly smoke and mirrors, right? I don't know, just something I pondered while studying about the reflective properties of light and coincidentally listening to the song The Mirror by Thievery Corporation, which has the hook "Our whole world is smoke and mirrors".
You might be familiar with the piece pictured to the left by M.C. Escher titled Hand with Reflection Sphere. Here is what Escher thought about the reflective properties of mirrors; "Such a globe reflection collects almost one's whole surroundings in one disk-shaped image. The whole rooms, four walls, the floor, and the ceiling, everything, albeit distorted, is compressed into that one small circle. Your own head, or more exactly the point between your eyes, is the absolute center. No matter how you turn or twist yourself, you can't get out of that central point. You are immovably the focus, the unshakable core, or your world".
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