Shallow Copy vs. Deep Copy
_ http://docs.python.org/library/copy.html

To stay safe when sorting dictionaries, don't. In one of the following links I think I scanned thru something that mentioned the sort goes kaput after a certain length with dicts. The workaround is appropriating them into a list.

_ http://code.activestate.com/recipes/52306-to-sort-a-dictionary/
_ http://code.activestate.com/recipes/304440-sorting-dictionaries-by-value-in-python-24/
_ http://wiki.python.org/moin/HowTo/Sorting/