I see in a lot of references for computer programming a function that returns an arbitrary value from a standard or frozen set. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_%28computer_science%29 describes it as pick. It surprised me when I discovered that Python sets don't have this method. I would suggest the returned value be somewhat random to prevent repeated calls from returning repeated results. Perhaps a small C-level counter could control that, which can then roll over uneventfully if enough calls are made.