I'm actually a big fan of Perl, but your characterization of Ruby is wrong. Ruby is Perl with object-orientation first, nicer syntax is a minor detail after that.
It's the only major detail to me, because I can do the majority of what I would use in Ruby, in Perl. Nicer syntax is something I can't do though.
See the CPAN module Moops.
I'm thinking more of things like the p6 arrow. Moops is part of the first part, things I can already do in Perl that are in Ruby.
If you can constrain yourself a reasonable OO system in Perl why can't you constrain yourself to a nice subset of the syntax?
I can, I can deal with overly verbose maps or shifting variables off @_ but Ruby provides some similar features to Perl 6 right now. That is an advantage on its part. It's just not compelling enough to make me switch as Perl can do most of the rest just fine.
Ruby also now has a VM, which people may or may not find more useful. I for one prefer Ruby 1.9.x to 1.8.x.
If Ruby has nice syntax then Smalltalk should be the syntax of the Gods ;)
Remember we are comparing to Perl ;)
The language of the Gods is clearly Lisp. Unfortunately it's such a pain to work in that most of the time the Gods just use Perl anyway. Oblig. XKCD: http://xkcd.com/224/