It haunts countries that have escaped poverty but still await prosperity, threatening to turn their aspirations into disappointments and their economic miracles into a mirage.
More alarming still is how Black Friday is turning into a mirage of economic growth.
Wasn't that bound to happen, and what on earth, she thought, as she watched everyone walking past her into the mirage, was taking so long?
The son of a gambler, it was his idea to clean up the city in the 1980s and create a summer season, attracting families by building dolphin pools and Treasure Island pirate battles into his Mirage resorts.
But for miles around — 13,000 square miles, roughly the size of Maryland — there is no radio signal to relieve the silence, no town to break up an empty plain with a horizon so horizontal that it fades into a mirage.
There is a certain personality type, intelligent but warped by a strain of connivance, that reads a few old books and, in the hope of fame, spins repetitious references to their supposed sources into a mirage of erudition and keys to conundrums that have foiled the experts.
These little fellows, in their Antibes shirts and sports coats, were an industrious lot, and it was rather wonderful to watch them while-with their scanty stock of gold paint, mirrored glass, and neon tubing-they caused the desert to blossom into a mirage of bright and flamboyant gaiety.
LOVE, the Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show featuring the group's music, still reels fans into The Mirage.
