I don't give LOC:FP much weigth. Sure, it's nice that Perl has a possible low LOC:FP, but take that to the extreme, we'd all be golfing all the time.

In many cases, given various ways of handling a small task (a "function point" for instance) the clearest solution is often the most wanted. And that can easily take two or three times as many lines as the shortest.

The ratio matters because research has shown that the cost of a single line of code remains more or less constant regardless of what language you use.

I'm not so sure about that. I write both Perl and C code for my living, although I write far more Perl than C. I've been programming Perl for over 10 years, and C for over 15. My Perl programs use less lines of code than my C programs, for doing similar tasks. But I tinker with my written Perl much more than with C. With C, there's often one obvious way, a standard idiom, or when it's written, it's not worthwhile to redo it. But with Perl, there's always yet another way. There's always the itch to change a few lines, to make it just a tad bit better.