Seventeen years into its post-apartheid incarnation, South Africa is already on its fourth president.

WSJ: The Real Legacy of Nelson Mandela

We wonder as well, with our tongues halfway in our cheeks, whether seventeen-year-olds will want to spend four years, or three, or even two living with mom and dad and staring at a computer screen.

FORBES: MOOCs: A College Education Online?

Married at nineteen, with three children by twenty-seven, she had moved eighteen times with a grass-is-greener spouse, and then became divorced after seventeen years.

FORBES: Starting A Venture At Age 55+: The Data, The Winners, And William K. Zinke, Founder Of The Center for Productive Longevity

The movie, seventeen years in the making, consists of a series of black-and-white vignettes involving caffeine and nicotine.

NEWYORKER: Coffee and Cigarettes

Seventeen years later Roth is respected as an industry leader in bringing high-level solutions to banks of all sizes.

FORBES: Customer Satisfaction Is As Simple As Green Grass

Seventeen years later they again vied for the city's most prestigious commission--the dome.

FORBES: Dome of the Brave

Seventeen years later reconstruction still isn't finished on one 15, 000-square-foot parcel.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Seventeen years later Kassalow and friend Scott Berrie formed a nonprofit, now called VisionSpring--a combination of Mary Kay and LensCrafters.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Seventeen years of whipsawing heartbreak for buy and hold investors, but wonderful opportunities for market-timing.

FORBES: Buy-And-Hold Is Dead And Gone

In fact, for most of the past seventeen years, successive American administrations have tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to accede to U.S. anti-missile deployments.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The Only Hope for Real Progress�� On Missile Defense