Scala... really?

I am not writing this to jump all over Big Jim's post but after reading it and seeing the syntax of Scala (and Java), I can't help but wonder, why anyone would use either language (based on syntax). Yes I know it is a matter of taste and everyone has an opinion. Let's just say my taste lean toward more succinct code.

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Set up initial work
#

import psycopg2
conn = psycopg2.connect("dbname='postgres' user='postgres'")
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute("SELECT * FROM pg_database")

def output(cur):
#Run two queries, one for headers, one for data
    tuples = cur.fetchall()
    
    colname = [x[0] for x in cur.description]
    buff = "\t" + "\t".join(colname[0:4]) + "\n"

    for row in tuples:
         # This is a little one liner but could easily be expanded 
         # for readability
         buff += "\t" + "\t".join([str(i) for i in row[0:4]]) + "\n"
    return buff

print output(cur)

I keep looking back at Java merged/derived/munged/glued languages, Groovy looks interesting and of course there is Jython but I think I will stick with good old fashion CPython just as I am sure that MST will stick with Perl.