[jabagonuts]

"which evaluates its left child, _and_ when it is true returns the value of its right child"

I like the way you put that. I always stumble for a moment when asked to explain why using "and" and "&&" interchangeably is not a good idea because it can lead to subtle bugs in your program. Maybe a mnemonic would help to remember this more easily.

    left && right is true or false, but
    left and right is right when true

or something along those lines.

[InAnEmergency]

That seems more confusing, since they evaluate to the same thing.

    1.9.3p392 :001 > true && 1
     => 1 
    1.9.3p392 :002 > true and 1
     => 1 
    1.9.3p392 :003 > false && 1
     => false 
    1.9.3p392 :004 > false and 1
     => false 
    1.9.3p392 :005 > nil && 1
     => nil 
    1.9.3p392 :006 > nil and 1
     => nil 

Which is why explicitly checking for "true" or "false" in a conditional is unusual.