Joel Spolsky explains the work necessary to go from 99% good to 100% good. In his case, it’s about software, but his logic could equally apply to all sorts of human endeavours.
Marginal Revolution reports that Howard Dean has sought economic advice from Joseph Stiglitz, Alan Blinder and Jeffrey Sachs. I’m slightly wary about the authority for the report, since the link in the story is clearly not relevant (unless there’s something about the number of the beast I don’t know).
Update Felix Salmon points me to the right article.
Umberto Eco: “A library is the best possible imitation, by human beings, of a divine mind, where the whole universe is viewed and understood at the same time. A person able to store in his or her mind the information provided by a great library would emulate in some way the mind of God. In other words, we have invented libraries because we know that we do not have divine powers, but we try to do our best to imitate them.”