title: Python: take max N elements from some list
body: <p>Is there some function which would return me the N highest elements from some list?</p>
  
  <p>I.e. if <code>max(l)</code> returns the single highest element, sth. like <code>max(l, count=10)</code> would return me a list of the 10 highest numbers (or less if <code>l</code> is smaller).</p>
  
  <p>Or what would be an efficient easy way to get these? (Except the obvious canonical implementation; also, no such things which involve sorting the whole list first because that would be inefficient compared to the canonical solution.)</p>