While enjoying John's discussion of the "satisficing heuristic," I believe that the context of his argument for deadline-influenced decision-making has led him to misinterpret one of his fond memories, which had in turn triggered one of mine, complete with, I hope, a corrective to his misinterpretation. He wrote: I can still recall my father and uncles referring to rough and ready solutions to mechanical or other technical problems as "good enough for government work," by which they meant something that would patch the problem until a better solution could be found. This misses, I'm afraid, what Wittgenstein refers to as the Witz, or "point," more specifically, the "joke" of the expression "government work." The expression was decidedly not meant as a stopgap measure until a better solution came along. In particular, the worry about deadlines and such is not a government problem. Instead, the expression, which can also be heard as "close enough for government work," is an indication of the work done by an organization and its employees who have secure jobs based primarily on seniority and whose work is not subject to market forces. The government hires contractors who compete with each other to get the jobs. Their work will be measured with argus eyes, but if the government does the job itself, they can jokingly say, "good (or close) enough for government work" and move onto the next task. Richard Henninge University of Mainz