Answers to every question ever posed can be found in a microscopically thin atmospheric layer surrounding our home planet. All the information ever collected is stored there, as well. Each conversation, every fit of anger, every step taken by every soldier in every war, all the handwritten notes, each email sent and received, the flavors of every food ever eaten, every pet that has been a companion to humans, every person ever born, and the aromas of every flower that ever blossomed and every perfume dabbed on every neck, every insect that crawled on every surface, and every raindrop that ever fell —all of it exists in The Repository, that thin band of atmospheric magic. The Repository encircles Earth just beyond the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Atmospheric scientists do not know about The Repository, simply because it is so incredibly thin and transparent. No one really needs to know about The Repository; when its capabilities are needed, its functions will commence automatically. And when that happens, its next new cycle will begin. It will replicate forever…until it collapses on itself in recognition of the pointlessness of existence. Recent developments suggest that point may be reached sooner, rather than later. But that will eliminate only The Repository for our planet; identical functions exist in various forms for every planet in our solar system and every other celestial body, so we can assume the process will continue through all eternity.
Religious scholars and spiritual explorers have long sought something to which they can assign (for want of a better term) “supernatural powers.” The Repository, as it happens, may be that something. But, unlike the entities manufactured in the minds of clerics and alchemists, The Repository is not an all-knowing, all-powerful, supremely compassionate, monstrously evil source of all things great and small. Instead, it is a practical and incomprehensibly powerful component of celestial memory. It is the equivalent of a computer whose storage capacity and speeds will be forever impossible-to-obtain by humans (or our servants who are trained to think and do for us).
The Repository is composed of tiny pieces of incredibly thin silicone-like material. Each piece has a surface area no greater than a fraction of a miniscule portion of a tiny piece of glitter that has been torn into a thousand pieces. Each silicone-like wafter contains a comprehensive record of an event or an attribute or an idea or a being, along with the equivalent of a numerically-coded link to all other related experiences and entities. Basically, each wafer is capable of performing several billion functions simultaneously. It is like today’s most powerful super-computer, amplified on an exponential scale far greater than any number thus far conceived by the mind of humankind. This may help to understand a wafer a bit better: a single wafer holds enough information to enable it (if it “chose”) to train a dust-mite to design and construct all cities with a population of more than 10 million worldwide.
Ponder that, if you will.
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Finally, I’ve received my first hard-copy issue (July 2025) of The Atlantic magazine. The cover article, Witness by Elizabeth Bruenig, addresses her experience in being a witness to executions, including what she has learned in her years of covering the death penalty. The article comes at a time in our nation when executions are making a “comeback,” thanks in large part I think to the degradation of our society’s compassion, civility, and human decency. I have not read the article word-for-word; it is quite long and is not uplifting in the least. But what I’ve read thus far is intriguing, informative, and flush with observations that make me question how people come to the conclusion that the death penalty is ever appropriate. Yet once, long ago, I was a death penalty proponent. The questions I was inspired to ask about the practice, though, changed my attitudes and made me feel ashamed to ever have supported it.
I found another article from the July issue surprisingly fascinating. The author, Jason Anthony, writes about an odd game called mheibes that involves teams trying to guess which members of an opposing team are holding a silver ring and in which hand that player is holding it. The article, The World’s Hardest Bluffing Game, describes the game’s process. As simple (and as improbable) as the game sounds, it apparently teaches participants to apply their experiences in the game to determine whether an “opponent” is lying to them. Something as seemingly innocuous as seeing sweat on a brow or hearing stress in a voice can make the difference between “guessing” and “knowing.” Anthony notes that there are many bluffing games throughout the world, with different cultures favoring difference approaches to the process. I was surprised to learn how frequent the team captains are right in their determinations about who hold the ring and in which hand. The game Anthony writes about was held in India; I may explore whether there are any such games nearby. Poker, the most popular “bluffing” game, has never interested me much, but I might learn to appreciate it. First, though, I’ll look into mheibes.
Though I enjoy The Atlantic quite a lot, I think it is intended for people who are far more intellectual than I. My intellectual interests are quite broad, but rarely deep. I might be considered a semi-pretentious subscriber, rather than a semi-literate subscriber.
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It’s closing in on 9:00 a.m. I woke many times during the night, which I blame for sleeping late (until around 7:00 a.m.). I’m still wrestling with stomach pains. The painkillers tend to cause constipation, which can be more annoying and almost as painful as the pain the drugs are intended to quell. Perhaps sleeping pills will not produce the same side-effects. Another possibility to explore.
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John — I think you’re quite right about these kinds of games having a purpose beyond entertainment. I’ve heard that said about games played by First Nations and Inuit peoples here – the games (and storytelling) are meant to teach or transfer knowledge. And, yes, apparently the game that we played at my friend’s house was a traditional game from their country. It’s interesting to think of games that we played at parties when we were young. One that was very popular in my mom’s family was a game where we were given pieces of paper and a pencil. Then a tray was brought into the room and set on the table where everyone could see it. There would be objects on it — usually at least 15 or 20 things like a match folder, pen knife, book, a playing card, etc.. Real random stuff. We had a short time to look at it – maybe a minute – then the tray was taken away. We then had to make a list of all of the objects that were on the tray. The person who correctly listed the most items was the winner. I think the purpose of it was to both increase observation skills and also memory, and also to encourage spelling and writing as we recorded our list. I absolutely loved playing that game at our family gatherings.
Another – a game just with 2 people – my grandmother and I played this all the time — was to spell words by drawing letters on each other’s backs. What a great game as it not only taught spelling, but also helped you to remember the shape of the letters of the alphabet – a great learning experience for people learning to write and to read.
That’s really intriguing, Bev. In reading your comment, I assume the family brought the game to Canada from Ceylon…which makes me wonder whether such games might have originated in that part of the world. Your description of the process–and the fact that it took place in a family setting–makes me think the “original” purpose of games was more than mere entertainment…it may have been (and, in some cases, may still be) related to education and preparation for life in the wider world. Thanks for sharing your experience, Bev. As always, I truly value your input and I appreciate that you read my blog after all these years!
I have a fun memory of playing a game that would be somewhat along the lines of the bluffing game with the ring. I was at a birthday party of a friend in Montreal – this was when we were teenagers – about 15 years old. The family were from what was known as Ceylon back then (this being before 1972). The party was in the evening. The father came in with a candle on a candle holder and turned off the lights in the room. We all stood in a circle facing inward and with our hands behind us. Each person was given a turn to hold the candle on the candle holder and walk around the outside of the circle. At some point, they would pass the candle into the hands of one of the people in the circle. You were encouraged to try to be deceptive by stopping and acting like you were passing the candle, but move on after a while. The game was for the people in the circle to try to guess when the candle had been passed from the person outside the circle to one on the inside. I remember this game well because I guessed correctly several times. The father took the candle at one point and went around, doing tricky things to try to deceive me, but he couldn’t and then started to laugh and said it was because I watched his eyes the whole time — which is exactly what I did with each person. I could tell what they were doing by the look in their eyes. It was a very interesting game. To this day, I pay a lot of attention to people’s eyes — well, also to animals’ eyes as well as you can tell so much by the look in a horse’s, goat’s or dog’s eyes (or ear movements). I think these kinds of games were probably considered very useful ways of teaching people to pay attention to subtle signals.