Questions on my mind:

- Is there a technical term for what happens when a person looks at a particular word long enough that the word loses meaning?  I had this happen once while driving through the North Shore in Minnesota, and seeing the word "cabin" on every billboard and property sign we passed.  After a while, the word dissociated from its meaning and became just an object in itself.  (Disturbingly, it happened to me again in this forum when I was browsing through the entries in CategoryEvil.  Brrr.)  I'm sure some linguist or psychologist has come up with a name for this.  Anyone know what it is?

''I don't know what the word is but drop me a line if you find out. I would say it's something like de-sensitization. The word ceases to have it's attributed meaning and becomes just a symbol through over-exposure to the symbol without the meaning. I find I can prompt it by repeating a word over and over about one or two hundred times. Not that I spend my days destroying the meaning of words but... -- IainLowe''

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I am a database developer in Des Moines, Iowa, USA, focusing mostly on document-based applications (LotusNotes / Domino and some web).  I found this via the KMCI Virtual Chapter in Yahoo! Groups.
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Frequently-used:  StartingPoints, RecentChanges, RandomPages, ExtremeProgramming 
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The ShakerQuote reminded me of this joke:

'''Q:'''  How do you make a statue of an elephant?

'''A:'''  Take a block of marble, and cut away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
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Favorite links:
     http://www.sabr.org   -- Society for American Baseball Research
     http://www.lileks.com -- the amusing world of James Lileks

Favorite writers:  IsaacAsimov; LesterBangs; UmbertoEco

Favorite artists:  my wife, Christee; NormanRockwell; MauritsCorneliusEscher
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Other noteworthy pages:  MountainDew, WikiAddiction
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