Ruby may be a TIMTOWTDI language, but on the other hand, without calling a method, proc, etc. to do so, every type of basic object usually has a single way to create it (Procs excluded - I really dont like the way ruby handles these - but thats just me and I still like Ruby).

Symbols always start with a ':'. Creating a symbol from 'foo:' is quite foreign to me (as a 1.8.x user) - ':foo :' [replacing hash rocket with a colon] or similar I would have no complaints about.