Question about accessing functions/methods on console

I just found out that I could access helper functions/methods on the console by prefixing with "helper." from an Obie blog. As an example "helper.dom_id Account.first" will return something like account_21, or whatever.

I was wondering if anyone knows why this works? Are there other prefixes available? I would be very interested in executing migration methods, to test my table mod code before writing migrations. Is this possible too?

Also, is there an active rails discussion group to post questions, if not here? At my last job, I sat next to a rails master, and really miss the "rails didactic", now that I am "the" programmer, instead of "a" programmer. :)