Wow, I just learned that ruby encapsulation can be broken by simply using:
my_object.send(:my_secret_private_method)
That's kinda useful to know if you're trying to unit test a private method, but makes the concept of encapsulation totally meaningless in ruby.
Apparently, Ruby 1.9 revokes this "special" privilege, but then there are still many ways to use the power of ruby meta-programming to get to them anyway (see above link for some examples).
