Thomas McGahee wrote:

> Yet the human mind can often distinguish the correct letter by the
> *context* in which it is used.

  It does a very good job in this regard.

  In this case, and exemplified by your ASCII graphics, it looks just
that much more suggestive without the "corners".  It looks a bit more
legible to me however with a space between characters:
      _   _   _   _    _   _   _   _    _   _
 | | |_| |_| |_  |_|  |   |_| |_  |_   | | | | |   |_|
 |_| |   |   |_  | |  |_  | |  _| |_   |_| | | |_   _|

> There is more to this 'than meets the eye'. The brain is an
> amazing thing!

  More than that, it can even see things that aren't visible (or aren't
even there) by the same mechanism.

  Cheers,
        Paul B.