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The Timer class allows you to schedule an action to
happen at some time in the future, using a thread. For
example:
 def f():
 print "30 seconds have passed"
 t = Timer(30.0, f)
 t.start() # after 30 seconds f will be called
 try: 
 # .... other stuff
 except SystemExit:
 t.cancel() # cancel the timer since we are
shutting down
It allows passing arguments and keyword arguments to
the function that is called. It also allows
*cancelling* the timer. That is, if the timer is still
waiting, we can tell it to stop its operation.
Why should this be in the standard library?
1. Timers are a standard, useful programming idiom.
2. It can be used as an example of how to:
 a. create subclasses of threading.Thread
 b. make threads that can be "stopped"
If this patch is approved I will then write
documentation. I'm not sure how to go about writing
tests for it.