I'm suprised that no one is offering an answer here, especially
considering what's being said about the community's support of Nuby's
in other threads.

Well, I'll take a small stab at the 2nd. Please correct me in so far as
I am wrong: In future versions of Ruby block parameters and def
parameters will work exaclty alike.

As for the first. Why not "do (a,b) ... end" instead of "do |a,b| ...
end" Well, without thinking about it to much, I imagine it is simply
due to syntax ambiguities.

T.