Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Nov 17)

QOTW:  "I stopped paying much attention to this thread a while ago, but
you've got to admire the persistence of somebody who soldiers on even
though Aahz, Fredrik Lund, and Steve Holden are all on the other side of
the argument..." - Grant Edwards
    http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/91db52ef3a5b98b7

    
    Duck-typing and type assertions: how much to check for type validity:
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/6c71ab21ba5eeb49/

    Why do generators have separate next() and send methods?
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/e179dcd356c78d78/

    Explicit self is here to stay:
        http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-explicit-self-has-to-stay.html

    Pros and cons of using "private" parameters to store function state
    across calls:
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/d4c4adb365ab9f41/

    How to obtain a reference to the "current" module:
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/685d3459fed28a53/

    A regular expression to match all Unicode punctuation characters:
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/e6d9d7b7ea39df86/

    sqlite3 and MySQLdb cursors behave differently in certain cases:
        http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/t/8ca7a8bb834ff65e/

    Unrelated types are not comparable by default in Python 3 - so a list