TipsFocus.com

Halloween should be fun, exciting, scary and silly, but it also can be dangerous and deadly. Everyone wants to have a safe and happy Halloween for themselves and their children. You can follow the 5 Simple tips To Keep Kids Safe This Halloween:

Driving: Make sure trick-or-treaters cross streets only at corners. Never permit crossing between parked cars or mid-block. This is extremely dangerous and is a leading cause of pedestrian accidents. Watch for small children darting across streets and running through neighborhoods. In their excitement they forget about looking both ways when crossing a street, which means that drivers need to be extra vigilant.

Costumes: Costumes should be made of light-colored, flame-retardant materials. Add reflective tape to costumes. Every child wants a fun and “cool” costume to trick-or-treat in, but parents need to think about safety when they give the OK for a costume. Will motorists be able to see the child, does it restrict a child’s vision or movement and does it include pieces that hang down or drag behind a child, which could get caught in something?

Candy: Treating your kids to a spooky Halloween dinner will make them less likely to eat the candy they collect before you have a chance to check it for them.Everyone has heard the warning over and over: never offer or accept candy that isn’t factory wrapped. And don’t offer trick-or-treaters apples; the kids want candy and no one wants to check an apple for razor blades.

Fire: If you set jack-o-lanterns on your porch with candles in them, make sure that they are far enough out of the way so that kids costumes won’t accidentally be set on fire.It’s fun to put a candle in a carved pumpkin, but not worth the risk of having an open flame around costumes that may or may not be flame resistant. And for safety, trick-or-treaters should carry flashlights, not candles, when walking the streets.

Pets: Halloween can be spooky for small children, so imagine how scary it can be for pets that don’t understand why everyone is dressed up funny? Keep pets inside so they don’t bite any little trick-or-treaters, or end up being used in a prank. For more Halloween advice visit the Phoenix Fire Department’s Web site, www.Phoenix.gob/FIRE.

About 40 percent U.S. women report that sex is painful, uninteresting or unsatisfying,but the majority of them aren’t bothered or distressed by it.A new study published Friday in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The study surveyed 31,581 women aged 18 to 102 from across the U.S. In addition to asking standardized questions about their sexual health, the survey also measured the women’s distress related to their sex lives — including feelings of anger, guilt, frustration, and worry.

Women ages 45 to 64 were most likely to report a distressing sexual problem (14.8%), followed by those ages 18 to 44 (10.8%) and those older than 64 (8.9%).

We thought it would be important to have an accurate statistic for distressing sexual problems,” said Jan Shifren, the lead author and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, in an Oct. 30 telephone interview. “If it’s not associated with distress, then it’s probably not affecting a woman’s quality of life.”

“I have long had a problem with the tendency of the healthcare system, aided and abetted by the pharmaceutical industry, to diagnose as a problem a symptom or sign experienced by the majority of people,” she said, citing sexual dysfunction in women as one such example.

With only a few days until the vote, Barack Obama has pulled to an eight point lead over John McCain in a tally of “traditional” likely voters in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll.

The same polling model Tuesday showed McCain within 2 points, his most encouraging news in the poll for a month. The poll now shows Obama leading 51 percent to 43 percent.

The poll would show initial reaction to Obama’s infomercial. The poll’s expanded model showed Obama moving into a nine point lead, 52 percent to 43 percent, among registered voters who told pollsters they intended to vote.

The traditional model considers registered voters who both say they intend to vote and have voted in the past as likely voters.

Now, this is a national poll, not a state by state one, and it’s a poll, and polls are what they are.

But if this is a good reflection of American voters right now, it’s not good news for a McCain camp, which is verging on being out of cash to spend on this campaign. That’s especially true as the Obama camp has seemingly limitless campaign cash.

As always, margin of error on these things is +/- 3 on the traditional, +/-2 on expanded. And while this is the poll we’ve chosen to track for an apples to apples comparison throughout the campaign, it’s only a poll.

Halloween is always celebrated on 31 October.
　　Halloween is one of the oldest celebrations in the world, dating back over 2000 years to the time of the Celts who lived in Britain
　　Halloween is also know by other names:
　　All Hallows Eve
　　Samhain
　　All Hallowtide
　　The Feast of the Dead
　　The Day of the Dead
　　Halloween in Welsh is ‘Nos Calan Gaeaf’.
　　Halloween is correctly spelt as Hallowe’en.
　　When Christianity came to England and the rest of Europe, 1 November became All Saints Day – a day dedicated to all those saints who didn’t have a special day of their own. They performed a mass called ‘All hallows mass’ and the night before became known as All Hallows E’en and eventually Hallowe’en or Halloween. (continue reading…)

There’s an old Confucius saying that goes “If you chase two rabbits, you catch none.” This is especially true when forming new habits and trying to be more productive, but how many times do we do exactly the opposite?

We try to do as much as possible to grow, learn and better ourselves. We read books, blogs, and soak up all sorts of information on creating new habits. The fact is, a lot of this effort is in vain. Our attention is pulled in so many directions, that our energy is spread too thin.

It doesn’t help much that our lives have become increasingly complex. We have more ways to communicate than ever before: face-to-face, phone, email, instant messaging, twitter, blogging, etc. We have more tools to get work done, but our energy is diminished after being pulled in a million directions. (continue reading…)