@ned.daily: I did as requested, similar outcome.

In terminal session #1:

 u1@~/Projects$ env no_proxy='*' python -m SimpleHTTPServer
 Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
 127.0.0.1 - - [28/Mar/2014 19:30:59] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 -
 127.0.0.1 - - [28/Mar/2014 19:30:59] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 -
 127.0.0.1 - - [28/Mar/2014 19:30:59] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 -
 ...

In terminal session #2:

 u1@~/Projects$ ab -n 20000 http://127.0.0.1:8000/
 This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
 Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd,  http://www.zeustech.net/
 Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

 Benchmarking 127.0.0.1 (be patient)
 Completed 2000 requests
 Completed 4000 requests
 Completed 6000 requests
 Completed 8000 requests
 Completed 10000 requests
 Completed 12000 requests
 Completed 14000 requests
 Completed 16000 requests
 apr_socket_recv: Operation timed out (60)
 Total of 16321 requests completed

I am going do try a dtruss/ dtrace now...