I asked if he had brushed his teeth, knowing he hadn't gone into the bathroom, and he grinned at me, saying, "Yeah!" In the parallel universe of autism parenthood, I jumped for joy and called his therapist to share the good news.

Think of how physically taxing painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel must have been; think of how many assistants and workmen must have been needed to complete it. Someone, surely, had to get the ceiling there to be painted on in the first place.

It also makes technology's powerful ability to save pieces of the recent past for us crystal clear. Who knew something as mundane as a saved voice mail could be such a simple yet profound document of life and death and love?

I'm lucky to live at a time when my species is doing such incredible things, and there are surely plenty of historic moments still to come. And I'm hopeful about Comet ISON next November...

Like Jason's quest to find the Golden Fleece with the help of the Argonauts, GM enlisted the Argonne (National Laboratory) to help them produce the revolutionary battery for Chevrolet's Volt.

We must acknowledge that our health care system is composed of people -- it doesn't just take care of people. Those people -- our cardiologists, nurse practitioners, X-ray technicians, and surgeons -- work better when they work together.

TED and HuffPost are planning an exciting experiment in the weeks ahead. We want to highlight some of today's most intriguing ideas. But to do so in a way that sees those ideas morph and develop in real time, in response to input from thousands of contributors, perhaps including you. Every weekend for the next year, we'll introduce a theme, anchored to a TEDTalk we think has at its core a powerful and timely concept. But rather than simply offering it up as is, we're opening it up to you to write your own post about it, leave a comment behind, and help refine it. Because that's the thing about ideas. They're not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, each of whom may bring an additional insight, they're capable of adaptation until they find their most potent form. A form that can truly go viral and perhaps impact millions of minds.

There is a macabre joke about the blindness of modern medicine's reductionistic erudition, and you have likely heard it: "The operation was a great success. Unfortunately, the patient died." That would be a whole lot funnier if it weren't so close to a perilous truth.