Fine. So you pick your tool (Java, Python, Node.js, presumably with an Nginx or Apache front end, though I'm not sure you want to put Node behind Apache), and use it.

I don't see how Node.js isn't a valid tool. Async can be a bit of an over-optimization, but you don't have to use it (even in Node), as Ted's naive Fib server shows. And Javascript is ugly as sin. But so's PHP, the language behind Wikipedia, and you have to use JS (or something like Coffee-script) anyway.

I don't know enough about Node to really judge it, but there's nothing I've heard in this whole flame-war that really rules it out.