I've added the logging code to implement and use a logger of last resort as discussed on the thread for http://bit.ly/last-resort-handler into the py3k branch, r87157. Gist of differences is available at https://gist.github.com/736120 - so Brian could remove the STDERR_HANDLER from his code. The futures test code can set sys.stderr to an io.StringIO instance during the test; the last resort handler checks for the sys.stderr value when emitting a record, not when the handler is created.