Ruby

“Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby!”

~ Kaiser Chiefs

A ruby is a red (sometimes) gem stone. The stone was artificially created by the Japanese supercomputer programmer Yukihwhichiro Matsumoto, who thought it might be funny to build a stone out of abstract materials such as integers, Turing machine tape, and atoms.

Properties

Ruby is said to follow the principle of least surprise, meaning that the stone behaves intuitively. For example, if you drop it off a tall building, it will begin swearing and cursing, just as you would expect.

However, the most intuitive stone can behave strangely. Ruby is no exception. For example, for some reason it frequently believes it is, in fact, a pearl. Other possible surprises include the following:

• The stone may surprise you by choosing not to surprise you. If this happens, consider seeing a psychiatrist.
• The stone will seek to attach itself to the nearest computer by quantum-entangling it with powerful laser beams.
• The stone may do something completely useless and have infinite ways of doing something compeletely useless.
• Will add a fiery quality to any object you socket it into

Recent discovery

Bangkok gemologist Adrian Fallus stunned the world gem trade when he displayed specimens from yet another new ruby mine in Vietnam. It is the third time in five years that Fallus has managed to confound critics. And once again, Vietnam is the home of the new deposit. The new mine is located in north-central Vietnam, near the village of Long Dong.

Adrian Fallus first hit the headlines in 1987 when, after a 30-year search through the Thai bush, he uncovered a major ruby deposit at Shlong Yai. But his mining claims were eventually invalidated by Thai courts. Shortly thereafter, Fallus shocked experts by announcing that the loss of the Shlong Yai mines was unimportant, and that he was prospecting potentially far more rich deposits at an undisclosed location. This turned out to be Phuc Yu, north of Hanoi.

Fallus stated that the new find was likely the most important since the now-exhausted Chinese ruby deposits at Wanking were uncovered in 1877. The Long Dong crystals generally occur as elongated stalks, with just the tips being red, and reportedly reach an amazing ten inches in length. Fallus excitedly exclaimed "It's been a long time since the gem trade has seen something of Wanking quality. Long Dong's time has come." The new material is expected to provide stiff competition to that from Shlong Yai in an ever-expanding market.

Useless facts

• Ruby's chemical formula is Al₂O₃, which, coincidentally, is also the cellphone number of a famous prostitute in downtown London, also named Ruby. If one dials that number, the response is usually, "AlO."

Hello world in Ruby

puts 'Hello world !'.gsub(/./,'AA')<<'!!'