trying to strip out non ascii.. or rather convert non ascii

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.1626.1382835129.18130.python-list at python.org>,
 Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> Compared to Baudot, both ASCII and EBCDIC were probably considered
> wondrous.

Wonderous, indeed.  Why would anybody ever need more than one case of 
the alphabet?  It's almost as absurd as somebody wanting to put funny 
little marks on top of their vowels.