I was going to write a retort here, but I won't bother since Larry has already done a much better job. The relevant section is at the bottom of the mail where he quotes Umberto Eco: "similar things should look different, because [otherwise], you end up with too little redundancy for effective communication." Consistency is not nearly what it's made out to be - which is why natural languages tend to be all but consistent. But then, you probably expected replies like this one on a site devoted to Perl - which raises the question of why you'd bother to post a node like yours on a site devoted to Perl.

And then even if I a feel a desire for consistency at some point, I'll pick Ruby anyway.

Makeshifts last the longest.