Why does the zen theme load javascript in the head element? Most tutorials for jQuery recommend loading javascript before the closing body tag so that the rest of the page can load first. However the Zen theme (im not sure about others) doenst do this. Why is this the case?
Some contrib modules only work correctly if jQuery and other scripts are in &lt;head&gt;.

Check out the Magic module or the AdvAgg module, which gives you greater control over how CSS and JS files are handled in your theme.