I have a very similar process to Big Mike.
I go through all the photos and delete anything that I know I'd never want, mis-focus, mis-fire, person blinking, flash didn't fire, water drops on my lens, etc...
Then I go back through the ones that are left, marking the ones that I want with a 5 star rating (I use View NX for this step since the stars "transfer" to NX2). Once I've marked all those, I try to step away for a bit to give me eyes time to forget the shots. Then I set it to show only the 5 star photos and go through those and look for duplicates of very similar shots, and choose one or two of the best of those...the others I take away from the 5 star and they dissapear...once done I have my keepers, but I do keep what's left of the other raws and not process them. When I open up Capture NX2, it's easy for me to go to that folder and select for it to only show my 5 star rated photos...makes it easier for batching, or just gerenally getting to the keepers.
I see no reason to keep shots where someone is blinking or I mis-focused.