The idea is to tweak when `mmap` or `malloc` are used by the Python interpreter. One allows memory to be released to the OS right away, whereas the other is not.
It is a useful trick if your application is generating lots of small objects.
Evangelical Christian, creationist, he believes the Bible literally (whatever that means, given translations and necessary interpretations).
We recently engaged in various conversations and it turned out he believes that Earth is 6000 years old (which has the most bizarre consequences: dinosaurs coeval of men, palaeontology being all wrong, cosmology predicting a 11-billion-years old Universe being a conspiracy of the Devil, etc.), that the Bible predicts Heisenberg uncertainty principle and various other scientific discoveries of the 20th century (therefore, by his logic, science and religion are compatible).
He is basically an incarnation of this website: http://answersingenesis.org/
Funny that he used to be the most disrespectful, unconventional and troublesome guy, which is why we became friends in the first place.
I have a friend who believes that Earth is 6000 years old, therefore dinosaurs lived alongside men and went extinct in the Medieval times (by some crazy global-scale dinosaurs hunting).
I am so sad that he won't be able to enjoy this discovery as much as I do, because he'll be focused on debunking the scientific assertion that this fossil is 110 million years old.
Corruption in Italy is hardwired in the behavior of people and their approach to life. It's enough to live in Italy for a long enough time to understand how people reason and why corruption is so widespread.
Obviously, being Italian doesn't make me an expert in corruption from a legal point of view, but I am pretty positive to know a bit about Italian mentality and facts confirm that corruption is as common in the North as it is in the South (I can cite my sources, if necessary.)