The list resizing scheme only downsized when more than 16 elements were
removed in a single step:  del a[100:120].   As a result, the list would
never shrink when popping elements off one at a time.

This patch makes it shrink whenever more than half of the space is unused.

Also, at Tim's suggestion, renamed _new_size to new_allocated.  This makes
the code easier to understand.