I have serious doubts about your experience

I again have doubts; for absolute performance on true number crunching, imperative is probably better. And for "handling data", imho FP shines brighter; imperative approaches to manipulating complex data are much more error-prone.

Despite what I've said, I think we generally agree on most things.

As an hobbyist Haskeller, I tend to embrace the unofficial Haskell motto of "Avoid success at all costs!" Responding to your 4 points, though,

1. Limiting yourself to a functional paradigm has benefits. You can use equational reasoning about code, and the compiler can perform more vigorous optimizations. Plus, for those of us who program for fun, it's...well...fun!

2. In Haskell it seems there is always something more to learn. Feature or bug, you decide.

3. Lisp (+ descendants), Haskell, and OCaml have compilers that have shown themselves to produce code which is rather fast.

4. Minimizing execution time and memory usage aren't always the main requirements for a program. Functional programming is well suited for guarantees of correctness, for example.

Yes

Just fork your own version of GNOME then. Given the number of complainers about the direction GNOME is going, I'm surprised no slashdot stories covering GNOME forks have surfaced.

KeepAss sounds like a stronger promise than what Cover Your Ass can get you.

Quite frankly, yes. This is quite the norm in our society; lots of "kid movies" make references to sex that children won't catch but adults will. I was just watching Free Willie with my little brother yesterday, and the Native American guy explained to Jesse how his tribe, in the days of plenty, used to spend all day carving totems, telling stories, and making babies. There was no need for flashbacks illustrating these actions, and if images of Indians having sex were displayed in front of my little brother, I would be very mad. Representing it graphically makes a huge difference, if not to you, then at least to most of today's society.