<human>: Can you provide a brief overview of the text?

So, I guess some background is in order. I've always been into the h/p scene, but mostly when I was younger. Halfway through high school I got out of it, even though I was designing system builds (mostly just for gaming), working for a PC repair company, learning how to admin a server, and all that. It's been 6 years or so since I was really into it, but I've followed tech news and things like that in the intervening time. Hell, I'll still pick up a copy of 2600 at barnes and noble.

I'm going into grad school for neuroscience, and as such I'd love to get more knowledgeable on networking (both as a way to analogize brain function and for general knowledge...networking is fascinating to me), programming (especially languages that will assist me scientifically, but also those that will allow me to do various neat things, like pulling data from the internet and all that), effective linux usage, network security, TCP/IP infrastructure...basically anything and everything. I never could figure out where to start, 2600 I could understand but the things detailed were beyond my skill level, and phrack was always way above my head.

I've tried learning Java on a number of occasions and never stuck with it, I'm somewhat proficient with python (but not as much as I'd like to be), and I'm fairly knowledgeable on how computers work overall. I've run linux distros a number of times (I remember downloading RedHat over my 56k modem when I was in middle school), played around with bash shells on unix servers, and all that but it's been a LONG time. What's a good place to start?
<bot>: It's been a while since I've seriously messed with the hacking scene, worked with linux, or done anything really interesting involving computers. Where do I start?