Word: belgians
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...testament to the nurturing power of boredom. The son of a Brussels paper wholesaler, Folon quickly came to regard Belgium as "a mental prison, the most boring + place on earth." Art became his means of escape from stifling surroundings, as it was, he suggests, for such other Belgian-born painters as James Ensor and Rene Magritte. Like them, Folon took a strong turn for the fantastic, serving up the quotidian in images dreamy or irreal. But Folon's pictures, compact and whimsical, have always owed more to the purposefully childlike simplicity of Paul Klee than to hallucinatory or surrealistic styles...
Fractious politics are a Belgian speciality: in the past decade the government has fallen eight times. Belgians have instead looked to their monarch, Baudouin, for stability -- until last week, when the King became a commoner for two days. Confronted with a bill passed by parliament that legalized abortion, Baudouin, a devout Roman Catholic, had the Cabinet declare him unable to reign so he could avoid signing the measure into law. The Cabinet promulgated the law instead...
...number of lands, in fact, ranging from India (the New Delhi Deli) and Italy (the Marco Polo eatery) to the Far East (the Dynasty restaurant) and something vaguely resembling the old Belgian Congo (the Safari Steakhouse). The decor inside the hotel is a giddy clash between the Forbidden City and Disneyland, in which virtually everything is either pink or purple -- unless it's gold. There are pink acoustic-tile ceilings, pink slot machines, pink Louis XV chairs in the reception area. There is a pink motorcycle parked in the '50s diner called Rock and Rolls, and there are pink chandeliers...
...heavily computerized as AT&T's could have maintained such a reputation is a near miracle. To experts who track technological mishaps, the past decade reads like an unending parade of computer disasters, ranging from the humiliating bugs that delayed one space-shuttle launch after another to the Belgian stock-exchange computers that collapsed under the rush of sell orders during last October's minicrash. Computerized elevator doors have shut unexpectedly. Factory robots have started without warning, killing workers. A misprogrammed medical X-ray machine delivered fatal doses of radiation to at least three cancer patients...
...This is a beautiful symbol of the growing cooperation between what can no longer be called the two [military] blocks but let's say East and West," said Belgian Foreign Minister Mark Eyskens, whose government was instrumental in arranging the visit...