Masi Oka is awesome. He still programs funky special effects algorithms for ILM 3 days a week and is pretty much the role model for geeks who want to overcome introvertedness. It must be awesome to be on a talk show and be interviewed about a program you wrote; too bad I can't see anyone ever saying "why yes Conan, I did fix ticket #53 in the salary tracking software."

There is a glitch in the matrix.

Thanks for mentioning Japanese Flip; I use Kanji Flip, which I now see is by the same author (Andre Khromov), and I couldn't be happier with it. It's wonderfully convenient to always have a stack of (virtual) flashcards in your pocket. I fire up Kanji Flip whenever I can squeeze in even a minute of study (waiting for someone to come out to the car, etc.).

I also believe that words (and expressions) can serve almost like macros, being signifiers for complex thoughts, and by manipulating these signifiers rather than the signified, underlying, simple thoughts, we make it easier to think at a higher level; much like how using a variable to represent a complex expression in a larger expression can reveal higher-level patterns that we're easily visible previously. My point being that through language study you learn words and expressions that don't have direct equivalents in your native tongue, and (I surmise) knowing such expressions increases your reasoning capabilities.