Why would I learn Python over other languages?

[Roy Smith]

I used to work with a guy who was a Perl fanatic (Hi, Nathan).  We 
parted company a year to two ago, but I still talk to him every once in 
a while.

A few days ago, I got some mail from him that said:

> I just wanted to drop you a quick line to thank you for being the Python
> evangelist at XXXX.  I've started a small programming project this week
> and I decided to prototype it in an interpreted language.  Thus, this is
> my first week working with Python!  I've still got tons to learn but it
> is very clean and I really like the ability to test code fragments
> interactively.

and later:

> So far I've been quite pleased by the amount and quality of 
> documentation available on the Internet.  I hate to say it, but it's 
> more readable than Perl (the code and the docs).

I know this sounds like one of those corny fake testimonials, but those 
are real cut-and-paste quotes from his email.  I just can't imagine 
reading the above paragraphs with "Python" crossed out and "Java" 
written in with crayon.