Sex, Sheep and New Zealand

Ode to an Up and Coming Blogger
Sex, Sheep and New Zealand

I have written a bunch of amazing blogs about my life and the world over the past year. Sadly, only about three people a day visit my blog. For example, over the past year, only three visitors from New Zealand have visited my blog. I have never been to New Zealand but have heard it's a swell place with great people.

I went to my blogging expert to ask what I needed to do to connect with readers from New Zealand. "Blog about sheep" she said. "And what about readers from the rest of the world?" I queried. "Blog about sex", she said.

So here is my blog about sheep and sex. First, sex. I know what sex is, but don't consider myself an international expert. I say that with a degree of modesty, since I have been on several T.V. programs alongside erudite sexperts. In these programs I often talk about the importance of body odor in mating in animals, and what I suspect happens among humans too. I have interviewed at least one female who tell me that she ends up dating the wrong men because she finds their body odor irresistibly attractive.

I gave a talk on this subject last month to three hundred hygienists and most of the women in the audience (there were no men!) admitted that they find the body odor of certain males to be attractive (there are also recent scientific papers dealing with the effect male odors have on women's physiology and brain activities). And like Napoleon Bonaparte, I certainly do like the body odor of my missus. Furthermore, once in a while, I do have the opportunity to perform with talented and good looking female singers and thespians.

All this blogging about sex, however, still may not bring in new readers from New Zealand. For that, I need the sheep. So here goes. New Zealand has zillions of sheep. Sheep have sex with each other (of this I am quite confident). Men may have sex with sheep (so I heard long ago from a knowledgeable farmer), but only occasionally do relationships develop (this from the Woody Allen movie), and rarely do mixed offspring arise (otherwise there would be more curly children than there are now). This may be the origin of the expressions "sheepish grin" and "pulling the wool over your thighs", but I am not sure about either, either.

Finally, I have never been to New Zealand but I know that it is not too far from Australia. Australians have told me they have too many kangaroos (that sex thing again). I have written a children's story about a kangaroo named Kenya with a hopping problem. You can read and hear the story at my free children's website, http://www.meltells.com/. I have written about hyenas, roosters, fish, bears, elephants, but not about sheep, nor duck-billed platypi. Any suggestions from the folks in Auckland?

Finally, please do not show this blog to children under the age of five. The older ones are likely to know more about sex and sheep than I do.

Mustard Sally

It was a great time making this with you guys!

Mahane Yehuda Shuk - Jerusalem

Mahane Yehuda - The Jerusalem Shuk

A Walk Down Memory Lane

The famous shuk of Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem has undergone some major facelifts since I was a student in the early seventies. Still, the stalls are much the same, as well as the espirit of the people selling their varied wares. Nowadays, it's not just fruits and veggies, fish and meat, but also coffeehouses, fancy shmancy candles and halva to die for (if you eat enough you probably will, too).

If you go there (and I recommend that you do), please seek out Uzi's stall. This Yemenite healer will sell you a radioactive-green-looking gat drink (his version of Viagra), an almond concoction from the time of Maimonides (still tastes great), and rejuvenate your face with an etrog spray that he himself rubs in. He guarantees that it will erase the creases of time. I don't know whether or not it worked, but just wandering around Jerusalem this week made me feel thirty years younger, and turned all my wrinkles into 'winkles'. A gantze mechayeh.

The Witch and the Toothbrush

The Witch and the Toothbrush -
A Story about Dental Hygiene

A dozen years ago, Prof. Herb Judes, then Head of the Dental Faculty of Tel Aviv University, asked me start a dental outreach program in Israel. Outreach for me means reaching out to kids. After all, when you teach a child good oral hygiene, his teeth will likely last a lifetime. Soon we were bringing small and large groups of Jewish and Arab school children to the Dental school. The kids came from all over the country and received free refreshments, toothbrushes and other gifts and most importantly had an initial dental assessment carried out by senior dental students.

However, there was one small problem. I had a 'window' of 45 minutest between the welcome lecture and the actual clinical assessment of the children. In order to fill this time productively, I decided to cook up a short children’s play related to good dental hygiene and called it “The Witch and the Toothbrush”.

In the story, a witch whose broom is broken falls from the sky and meets a young girl. The girl makes a nasty comment about the witch's teeth (which were ugly as night). The witch loses her temper and casts a spell on the girl and turns her into a red toothbrush. The spell will only be broken if a young child learns to brush his or her teeth properly, using the toothbrush.

The play soon took on a life of its own. I asked the children, parents and teachers to play the various roles. We brought in props. We added a pianist, some songs, and my colleague Dr. Alon Amit agreed to play the role of the dentist (appropriate, since he is also a real one). The play was even translated and performed in Arabic!

The head of children's cardiology at a major hospital met with me and told me how important oral hygiene was in his field – would I turn the play into a film for his patients, he asked. I raised the money from Shari Arison's fund and the Braverman family in Los Angeles and enlisted my friend, the late great Dudu Dotan to play the part of the witch. Together with the cinema department of Tel Aviv University, we auditioned hundreds of children for the roles of the girl and boy, a talented scriptwriter transformed my story, and we even had animation. The thirteen minute film, the Witch and the Toothbrush, is now freely available in

Hebrew http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGvETmmRm24

And

Arabic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMyNCRISkxo

About five years ago, Evi Wyler and I decided to publish the Hebrew version of this story into book form, and so far have we (mostly she) have donated about six thousand copies. The publication is quite unique because it contains this story but when you flip it over and upside down, you’ll find another one of my story’s, "What to do with a Used Toothbrush".

The English versions of the two stories are available free on http://www.meltells.com/, alongside my other stories about dental and general well-being with my popular characters such as Dr. Cluck, the Tooth fairy and Mel the Smell Dragon.

Ironically, after getting the movie filmed and the books produced, I have now gone back to the original play. We have recently performed in Tel Aviv and Netanya, and are headed to Kiryat Gat on August 4^th to perform for 100 Ethiopian children, all of them new immigrants. The Jewish Agency for Israel runs a program which "...offers the young immigrants an embracing non-formal learning and enrichment opportunity that can help them in their lives in the Absorption Centers and help them get ahead in school. We believe that the tough, frustrating encounter with Absorption Center life can be turned into an enjoyable, fruitful and effective learning experience for new immigrants, which is why the program includes a variety of activities relating to the children’s world, such as general subjects like public health and life skills..."

Dental hygiene is of great importance, since children from Ethiopia often have very low caries levels when they first arrive in Israel. However studies have shown that after one or two years of eating sweets and other cariogenic snacks, their caries levels soar. We hope to give each child toothpaste and a toothbrush kit, and books for their classrooms and library.

What should the un-iversity be about?

What should the un-iversity be about?

Nothing, and everything. The curriculum should resemble a me-nu more than a syllabus. It should be a resource for learning, for thinking, for creating new ideas, new paradigms (whatever those are). It shouldn't compete with regular universities (we have enough of those) in offering standard courses. The courses we offer should be 'off the wall'. It is likely that the first will be offered by Lior Manor. I dream of a course in which he explains the thought processes of the magician, the psychology involved, and the scientific principles which magicians use to 'bend' our perception of reality. Now that would be a course worthy of the un-iversity. You can expect me to be in attendance. Other courses I would personally like to attend or help teach:


1. Dentistry: medicine or business?
2. "Tricks of the Trades" How not to buy a piano, a house, etc.
3. How to think and succeed like Yossi Vardi (this is one I would strictly be on the listening end)

What might a teacher at the un-iversity do? Freely share his/her disruptive view of one segment of our un-iverse. What should a student do? Commit to attend the entire run of any given course (maybe with one or two unavoidable hookies).

Your comments are welcome!

The un-iversity might also publicize groups and events that share this vision. See, for example, the e-mail below I received from Or-Tal Kiriati. There are lots of organizations promoting innovation among youth, but there is no site that we know of that un-ites them.

יזמות טכנולוגית
http://startupseeds.com/

חינוך ליזמות
www.unistream.co.il/ and www.decimaventures.com/unistream.html

בנק לאומי
www.leumi.co.il/Leumi/Article/0,2777,170994,00.html
http://www.leumi.co.il/Leumi/Home/0,2777,6567,00.html
http://www.yazamim.org.il/

קבוצת עופר
http://ne.sisma.org.il/school/hativa-b/nashad/default.aspx

התאחדות התעשיינים ומשרד התמ"ס
http://www.industry.org.il/?CategoryID=1151&ArticleID=1034&sng=1
http://www.kav-lahinuch.co.il/?CategoryID=311&ArticleID=4644

מרכז נוער יזמי כפר סבא
http://www.kfar-saba.muni.il/?CategoryID=548&ArticleID=290&sng=1

אשלים - נוער בסיכון - פרויקט יזמות
http://www.ashalim.org.il/default.asp?catid=%7bBDEAE394-92AC-4DAD-B186-83834981C3BC%7d&details_type=1&itemid=%7bCE608647-E844-4132-9DC6-2BCACA99260C}
מסמך על התוכנית
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1986480/%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%98-%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A2%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%9C%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%A2%D7%A8
ועוד קישורים
http://www.zionut2000.org.il/hebrew/meidaon-yazamut/email.html

תוכניות אחרות - יזמות חברתית וכ'
http://noar.education.gov.il/main/upload/merkaz/merkaz5.htm
יזמות התנדבותית
http://ivolunteer.org.il/Index.asp?CategoryID=280&ArticleID=2811

עמותת צבע (צעירים בונים עתיד) - יותר חברתי פחות יזמות
http://www.tzeva.org.il/

Summary of the idea:
Let's get them all together all the doers, mentors, leaders, investors together with the youth, in a one day happening, at any given date around the summer vacation or at the beginning of the school year.

The ten minutes that changed your life.

To Be or Not to Be!
The ten minutes that changed your life.

Just yesterday I was talking to Jeff Pulver about his thoughts on chance, providence, and good old luck. I was thinking that each of us must have experienced an episode that changed our life, shaped our career, secured our financial well-being or brought about fame. Some of us have had several, but if I asked you to recount the most critical ten minute segment in your CAREER, what would it be? And how did luck/coincidence/providence/hard work figure in? Here is mine, an excerpt from my new book (coming out in a few weeks) entitled "Save Your Breath".

"…In frustration, I petitioned Tel Aviv University to let me manufacture samples of the two-phase mouthwash by myself (this would have been a disaster, as I still have no manufacturing expertise). At the last moment, fate took the form of a telephone call. Chaim Regev, head of marketing at Israel's largest manufacturer of toothpastes and other household products (Shemen-Soad Ltd.), had heard about the mouthwash formula from a newspaper article. He told me that they had thousands of empty mouthwash bottles lying around, and had been thinking of throwing them out. Could I fill them, he wanted to know. I explained the advantages of the two-phase product, and mentioned the issue of having to shake it before use. Chaim Regev turned the disadvantage into an advantage. "We'll emphasize the need for shaking. We'll color each phase in bold hues. People with bad breath won't mind shaking a container if they believe the results will be positive."

The product turned into a hit in Israel, then was followed by a British version that became Dentyl pH, the second bestselling mouthwash in the UK.