Shangri-la

A Himalayan country of lush mountains, Bhutan is known as the world's last Shangri-la.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter delivered the keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore Saturday.

He spoke a kind of Chinese that I don't understand very well, but I think he said something about a lamasery near here—along the valley, I gathered—where we could get food and shelter. Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain-pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there.

The length of the journey gives a measure of the anachronism, which as [César] Vallejo said in one of his stories made the hill town a Shangri-La, forgotten by the rest of Peru.

With the fragmented policy-making system which results, America is a Shangri-La for interest groups and lobbyists.

He couldn't believe it when he'd discovered there actually was a town called Bedford Falls. It seemed like fans of the film had all collected there to live out their lives in a self-created 1940s American Shangri-la.

Tiki Style was forged in the business of bars and restaurants and celebrated in backyard luaus and at theme parks like Disneyland and roadside attractions such as Tiki Gardens. As these ersatz Shangri-las competed to outdo each other with the latest tropical-inspired styles, the popularity of the neighborhood Tiki lounge soared.

The human species was lucky, because the only time in the development of bacterial populations when diversity is sacrificed for reproductive expediency is during the exponential burst of growth that follows their discovery of an unprotected ecosystem. The two notable instances in which bacteria find these Shangri Las are in test tubes filled with fresh media and in naive animals that have not seen these particular bacteria in recent immunological memory.

The desire for a better life in a better place, for a land of happiness, is perhaps one of the most basic human desires that has found many expressions in various forms—a paradise, a Golden Age, a Shangri-La, an ideal society or—generically speaking—a utopia.

Brian Wilson made the ultimate departure last week: his death all the more poignant because he fixed LA in the world's mind as the cloudless Shangri-La it isn't.