One thing I hate about not being able to keep as close an eye on the Python community is the lack of Ian Bicking:

Actually "merging" the two is probably unlikely. It's the kind of weird political maneuver that open source projects don't really do, unless they are part of weird "foundations" and have "managers" and stuff like that -- it's too much politics for programmers, and reeks of strategy and plans. You aren't supposed to announce plans for your software, you are supposed to implement your plans and then announce them. If a merge happens, it should be more like a realization than a strategy.

If you have some spare time or are sick of reading blogs or whatever, I suggest lurking on Python related mailing lists, even if you don't care about Python. The above is from Ian's blog but little nuggets of insight like this are very common on the mailing lists. There's so many smart folks over there...