In the old days of newspapers, articles were fit together on paper and pictures help "soften" the text by breaking it up into smaller chunks. Also, people are more likely to read an article if the author's picture is also featured. So, it is really just an effort of the publisher to get more eyeballs on the article.

...in dog years.

Why does it take until 2022? By then we will have self-driving cars. The Chevy Volt needed a software upgrade and had to be returned to the dealership with all the associated hassles. http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/1... Tesla has been upgrading their software OTA for more than a year. You go to bed and in the morning you have a car that works better and is more capable (for example, adding autopilot). I'll take that any day of the week.

The usual X-Windows versus Client-Server architecture we've been debating for years. How smart and how local do you want your UI to be?

I supported NASA's "If we build it, they will come." because we needed to establish heavy lift as a foundation to do any manned or heavy robotic exploration and exploitation of space. How about a space plane for low earth orbit and a mini space station for the Moon and Mars.

Nate Silver's 538 blog (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) is much more interesting. His model takes into account polls (which he adjusts based on past accuracy) as well as economic factors. Nate is currently estimating a probability of an Obama win at 77%. Probably a much more accurate assessment than an estimate of 98%. Nate Silver prediction for the 2008 presidential popular vote percentages was within 0.1% of the actual results.