• Well, sure. Why does this make it drunk? I could just have easily done it with ruby (in fact, starting today, I might have). Importantly, though, using DBI forces you to understand references. Perhaps you're not aware that there are numerous people who consider perl a "scripting language" and have lots of backticks and/or system() and rarely qx//. What makes the point important is that the synergy between the two caused me to learn more, and in fact pushed me higher up in pay and rank.
• You are assuming this is exclusive, that you have to use perl to learn. This is not the case. With Linux and Solaris in general, I spent a lot of time porting applications between the two OSs. I'd do the prototyping on both ends in perl, and then port in whatever language (including perl) when I got parity between the applications. This goes for working with protocols in general. LDS wrote MP3::Napster without having Napster's documentation. Perhaps Lincoln doesn't need to learn any perl, but almost anyone (there are very few of his caliber) else is at least going to have to hone their skill. Benchmark it. It runs faster. But why does it run faster? These sorts of "revelations".
• Again, this exclusive assumption. If you get from the point of "hello world" to understanding parse::recdescent or B::anything, you haven't just learned perl. You've learned a lot about operating systems (such as, "what is a file?" "what modes can a file have?" "what is a directory?" and so on). I haven't been trying to say that people have to use perl to do anything. I'm saying it's (goshdarn) good, and if you think you can't get more out of it, chances are you haven't looked at it enough.
• Pardon me for being a little emotional upon realizing I'd belonged to any community for seven years. I met my wife about six months afterwards, so I've actually been around perlmonks in some form or other for longer than I have my wife.

I suggest you have a look at Meditations and see if it's appropriate material. If it's not, perhaps it should have been in PerlMonks Talk or whichever.