Why bother using NURBs? Why not polygon/Subdivision?
When I start modeling Anubis, I know it will be applied in some animation rendered with PRMan, so the rule is to avoid polygon at all cost.
As a high-level primitive in RMan, NURBs define large curved surface exactly with much less data than polygon does approximately. It will take much less disk space to store RIB and the memory consumption of rendering will be much more efficient. When the polygonal mesh is too dense for the image being rendered, aliasing seems to be inevitable.
A very heavy polygonal charater will definitely slow down the interactivity of skinning, deforming and animating, and NURBs can be displayed in a rougher mode.
When texturing NURBs patchwork, texture map will be divided into many isolated parts, each of them can mantain a high resolution. If you texture a polygonal head, that is one texture map can be used, it must keep a very high resolution. I still cannot texture and render polygon/Subdivision correctly in PRMan:(
My hardware(PIII550,256M RAM,G400 16M) is another reason why I must use NURBs inspite of many disadvantages.

How many patches is your Anubis made of?
I don't know excactly since I constantly modify the model, but no more than 200. I think a skilled modeler will use less of them than that.

Have you any plan to provide any tutorial about the model here?
Yes. I will post any note that is useful.

What surface editing tools are most useful when modeling organic stuff?
I think tools like Align Surfaces, Rebuild Surfaces, Detach Surfaces and Global Stitch are most useful, and here is an example of how to use them.

Would you like to make your MEL scripts available here?
Yes, I have just opened a new area about MEL scripting. I will post some of the very scripts I am using and developing, and each of them will have a short description and an application note if necessary.

How to use your MELs?
All of my MELs have a user interface for those artists never touch command line. Source the script, you will see the UI.

Do you use MEL more than Maya API? Or just write MEL?
I am learning to develop API plug-ins now. But MEL is a powerful language completely related to everyday's working. No external compiler is needed to develop MEL scripts. You can quickly find solutions and fix bugs in process of production. Working with API requires a lot more planning and hard working to overcome many problems.

There are tons of CG artists putting knocking out stills online. How many of them can write programe? What is the use of programming in CG?

Computer Generated Image had been the toy of scientists and programmers from the very beginning until those interactive 3D software packages were introduced. More and more artists without any technical background can fly those softwares to create killing CGI now, but people still rely on programming to create many VFX.

A well-written script can make things possible to be done. No animator will try to create a flock of fish for example by hand. It is impossible to simulate crowd behavior by traditional techniques such as keyframe and particle system.

Scripts can generate smart user interface to speed up production workflow. With a slider like this, people will be able to animate an attribute much faster.

I am working with some tornado effect, and I find it not easy to bend the tube of tornado with dynamic fields. Is that possible to use a curve to manipulate particles?

Yes, but you should have the basic ideas of using an arrayMapper to apply Ramp texture to PP attribute and sampling curve informations. Here is a step-by-step note about this topic.