I hate that trend too. At least it looks fairly small, I've seen sites that have like a 200px header that stays, or worse, one at bottom too, or even worse, one that is not even right on top, but half way down the middle.
It seems as screen resolutions get better, UI makers are becoming less and less efficient at using space. Just look at how big all the UI elements in newer versions of windows are and how terrible the space usage in dialogs is.