I think everyone loves breakthroughs. Call them "Aha's!", or "I get it!" moments, or whatever you like, these are events that the brain loves.

Breakthrough moments are a critical part of the learning curve for new skills, like learning a new language, learning a new sport, or maybe learning a skill like computer programming or sailing.

On his blog, "Our time to act," Joe Gerstandt asks some great questions. Huge questions. Questions that interest me and that are topical to this blog, so I'll respond to them here.

Joe asks (at the end of his blog post titled "The Direction a Community Chooses"):

How do you change a community conversation?

Ahoy! I'm speaking to you live from inside the learning curve of a big learning endeavor: learning a new language. I'd like to report what I'm finding here in the wide expanse and the rough terrain of climbing the learning curve.

As we get older, the brain gets more set in its ways. The neural pathways and patterns get deeper, easier to run and harder to change. "In a rut," the saying goes, although when the saying was popularized we had no idea it was so apt all the way down to the neural level.

Why do old brains get into ruts? It isn't because old neurons work differently then young neurons. It's only because we get out of practice of re-organizing the neural net. We forget to learn new things and to shake up the old neural net by finding ways in which it doesn't work well and re-wiring to fix them. Since it takes time and energy to re-org, we'd rather not re-org, if we don't have to re-org.

Ruts and re-orgs are mirrored in the social and science levels as well, since society and science is, in a way, just a product and an extension of our beliefs and neural wiring interacting with everyone else's.

Here's a neat TED talk that may be able to demonstrate an opportunity to re-org at both brain and social levels. Maybe it will shake up your neural net a little bit and give you the opportunity to re-organize your beliefs and/or thinking the way you do a spring cleaning in the garage. It also proposes a shake-up and clean-out of current scientific thinking around how humans evolved to be the way we are.

In what ways are humans different than our closest genetic relative, the ape? Do those differences offer us clues as to the history or environment that shaped those changes? Elaine Morgan says yes.

Enjoy her TED talk, "Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes."

Elaine is hereby nominated for being my new hero. :)

UPDATE 11-Aug-2010: Facebook Export is a free tool that will download all your Facebook information - friends, pictures, wall notes, profile, etc. - to your own computer in XML format, which is widely supported. This makes it easy to backup your data, take back your data before you delete your account, or migrate your data somewhere else (destination must support FBE file format for direct import.) (Aug 11, 2010)

The downside to the many easy, instant and cool blogging platforms on the Internet is that it is really easy for Internet-active folks to suddenly discover they have started a few too many blogs, joined a few too many social networks, and have created too many points of presence to keep up well.

I have a one-page chart that anyone can make that has helped me manage two things: keeping focus and awareness on my important blogs, and easily channeling blog post ideas to the right blog.

How fun! The language constructed especially for the movie "Avatar" has fun and cool support on the web.

If you've ever wanted to create your own language, you might want to see how Paul Frommer, a professor at USC with a doctorate in linguistics, built Na'vi. Check out these sites:

Learn Na'vi

http://www.learnnavi.org/
An active forum plus a cool downloadable PDF of "The Na'vi Pocket Guide."

http://wiki.learnnavi.org/
A wiki, related to the learnnavi.org site, with even more on the Na'vi language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%27vi_language
This Wikipedia page has a summary of the structure and grammar of Na'vi. Not much in the way of vocabulary, though.

Benjamin Zimmer has this post, Some highlights of Na'vi, on the Language Log at the University of Pennsylvania.

Na'vi has tongue clicks (the 'x' character) as well as some tricky consonant combinations to practice. I wonder when there will be Skype calls and Second Life spots to practice Na'vi in voice! (When I find them, I'll post about them here.)

You can hear movie characters and Dr. Frommer speaking Na'vi on the NPR December 15, 2009 episode of Morning Edition feature, "Do You Speak Na'vi? Giving Voice To 'Avatar' Aliens."

About Paul Frommer

Paul Frommer created the Na'vi language according to the requirements of director James Cameron: it should not be like any common Earth language, it should be easy for the actors to speak and learn, and it should be grounded in the background of a people who live in nature and network with nature in a deep way.

The UNIDENTIFIED SOUND OBJECT blog has this interview with Paul Frommer, with a picture of Dr. Frommer. It also includes the story of how Lightstorm Entertainment - James Cameron's production company - connected with Dr. Frommer for the project. Thanks for the interview, Matteo from Project U.S.O.!