title: Is there an inverse function for time.gmtime() that parses a UTC tuple to seconds since the epoch?
body: <p>python's time module seems a little haphazard.  For example, here is a list of methods in there, from the docstring:</p>
  
  <pre><code>time() -- return current time in seconds since the Epoch as a float
  clock() -- return CPU time since process start as a float
  sleep() -- delay for a number of seconds given as a float
  gmtime() -- convert seconds since Epoch to UTC tuple
  localtime() -- convert seconds since Epoch to local time tuple
  asctime() -- convert time tuple to string
  ctime() -- convert time in seconds to string
  mktime() -- convert local time tuple to seconds since Epoch
  strftime() -- convert time tuple to string according to format specification
  strptime() -- parse string to time tuple according to format specification
  tzset() -- change the local timezone
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Looking at localtime() and its inverse mktime(), why is there no inverse for gmtime() ?</p>
  
  <p>Bonus questions: what would you name the method ? How would you implement it ?</p>