Newbie asks about static variables...

[Evan Simpson]

MDPs are perfectly predictable, stable, and useful provided you and anyone
likely to read your code knows how they work.  Unfortunately, they cause
someone to pop up here at least biweekly with a bewildered expression,
wondering if they've found a bug in Python.  I can't help speculating that
they might be better understood if explained as static variables which you
can override with an optional argument <0.9 wink>.

Python 2.0 might change this, but then again, it might change everything.
I'd worry more about some poor maintainer being terminally baffled by the
idiom.

every-misunderstood-quirk-has-a-feature-lining-ly y'rs
Evan Simpson