Testing methods

[Ovid]

Hello,

Relatively new to Python and I thought I would teach myself the
language by building a test harness.  After I'm done, I will probably
be throwing it away in favor of Pyunit, but it seemed like a good way
to learn some of the fiddly bits.

Fiddly bits such as "can this object do that?"  In my test code, I
want to test whether or not a given class *or* instance of that class
can execute a particular method (i.e., if it has or inherits the
method).  For example, one way (in Perl), to test if object "$foo" can
execute an arbitrary method would be:

  if ( $foo->can($some_method) )

For the life of me, I can't figure out the equivalent in Python.  I
suppose I could do:

  if some_method in Foo.__dict__:

But that doesn't tell me whether or not "some_method" is a method. 
Further, if I have an instance of a class, that doesn't seem to work. 
I've been searching through the docs, but I can't quite figure this
out.

I'm a clueless newbie here, so please be kind :)

Cheers,
Ovid