Interpreting Icons and other nonsense

How many points are these worth? what do they do?

I played "Race for the Galaxy" for the first time today over lunch.  I haven't played enough for a fair analysis, so this is not a review - but I did encounter something during the game that got me a-thinkin' about board games, design, playability, etc. etc. so forth and so on.

I'm not even going to go into detail about how the game is played, except for this: in the game, there are cards that when played, provide some ability or bonus.

The thing that caught my attention, though, was not the function of the cards - but the design.  Not that it was bad design.  Just very icon-heavy.  Very icon heavy.  Look at the picture.  See all the icons?