Hamlet,
Good suggestion. Other languagues - Erlang, Haskell and Python.  I am convinced there is sufficient interest and experimentation (even if they are thought experiments ) going on .

IMO:
Functional "style" fits well in the web-way of doing things and hence, I am told, a reason for many Google applications to be based on Python. Python presents both an OO paradigm as well as a functional paradigm (which I think is the way Java efforts are going). Whether the mix-and-match'ing of the paradigms will cause more confusion than benefit, only time will tell,  but, as a collective, we have to experiment with enough variations.

While OO is an excellent way to manage state, functional languages seem to be powerful when computing values ( atomic or structured). Since functional languages, by definition are side-effect free, one should then be able to distribute complex calculations without worrying about dependencies - and hence can be parallelized in the coming multi-core world.

Even while I type this, I am mocking myself, since while I sound intelligent about this, I know how shallow my understanding about this really is - and hence we need to collaborate and learn. Increasingly, I am realizing that the functional way and the OO way are opposing each other at one level ; yet they are fantastic in their own way - so the future lies in the hands of the folks who know to leverage this diversity and create a better whole.

Anybody else have thoughts?