Very nice. If any folks interested in Ruby are reading the article and feeling jealous, make sure to check out RubyInline ( http://www.zenspider.com/ZSS/Products/RubyInline/ ) - it's pretty solid.
Might do a direct comparison of the efficiency of the bridging between RubyInline and Cinpy if I get some time. I suspect Python would win just because Ruby's object bridging is quite intense..
http://www.scipy.org/Weave
It's not as small or self-contained, but it looks to be more actively maintained.
A comparison with some other optimization methods:
http://www.scipy.org/PerformancePython