thanks for the replies, Kidd and Alec,
Haven't done much PERL since the early 5 days, but Parrot's cross-language byte-code VM opens up so many library possibilities that it's almost overwhelming. I might just go back an brush up to 6! (Aside to EFG, if you read this: Parrot is written in HASKELL ---- na na na naa naaa naa

) ... I'm also tickled that Parrot plugins are packaged as Python eggs.
Kidd, have you come across any metrics on the speed of the parrot vm? It's so cool that the processors are getting fast enough that a lot of stuff that used to have to be compiled to get speed now can be scripted.
Alec, thanks for that overview - just what the code doctor ordered. Cool, was wondering how
really necessary it is to go from print "Jello World" to print ("Jello Mold"). And the write ups mostly seem to say what you have - that 2.5 & 2.6 has a lot of the future 3.0 already in place. I'm pretty happy with 2.5 and 2.6 (especially 2.6's multiprocessing package). Wonder what they're really up to, if there's no significant speed up. hmmmm. It also looks like IPython would need a ton of rework to go 3.x.
PyPy is wonderful for recursion (e.g. stackless and coroutines) Did a bit of pypy on .net --- *really* weird at first (weirding due to .net, not py

)
Do you all get the sense that the widely diverse languages are actually starting to converge?