As a geriatric millennial, aging is always on my mind. I often look at people in their sixties and wonder if I’m going to age the way they did. Do their bodies accurately characterize what my body is going to be like after approximately 25 years? I think the answer…

In a fundamental sense, a programmer’s job is to give a set of instructions to a computer so that it does something useful. So, why does this have to be a profession and why are programmers considered highly-skilled workers? Isn’t giving instructions to get something useful done a very basic…

If the earliest humans had access to devices that could take photos and record videos, would we ever develop any writing systems? How would human languages have evolved in such a scenario? Consider the following little story: “A young couple spent an evening together. …

There’s no denying that Indians are leveling up every year by living through increasingly long and uncomfortable heat waves. My news feed is full of articles that talk about how various places in north India have recorded ridiculously-high temperatures in recent days. The reasons they suggest vary widely, but most…

We’re living in the golden age of traffic jams. Never in history have humans experienced such large, frustrating jams. And a few decades from now, when they become a thing of the past thanks to self-driving cars, we’re likely to find ourselves telling stories about them to our grandchildren. …

If you are having a hard time deciding which language you should learn next, I suggest you try doing what many seasoned language learners do: listen to songs in several languages, and pick the language with the most beautiful songs. …

By the end of this century, homo sapiens — homo sapiens sapiens, to be more precise — will almost certainly become a species that is not confined to a single planet. In other words, humans are going to inhabit both Earth and Mars. But what would life be like on…

There’s really no arguing that the latest iPhone looks far better than every single Android phone available in the market today. I think most Android users will also agree with me when I say iPhones usually perform slightly better than Android phones. …

If I were to show a random English name to you, I’m sure you can accurately tell if it belongs to a man or a woman. How do you do it? Do you consciously look for any specific patterns in the name? I don’t think so. Recently, I had to…