static class methods and data members

[Neil Zanella]

Hello,

I would like to know whether it is possible to define static class methods
and data members in Python (similar to the way it can be done in C++ or Java).
These do not seem to be mentioned in "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz and David
Ascher. It seems like they are a relatively new feature... It seems to me that
any truly OO programming language should support these so I'm sure that Python
is no exception, but how can these be defined/implemented in Python? Currently
I have Python version 2.3 installed on my system.

Thanks,

Neil