JILL BARKER
The Province

We spend 65 per cent of our day sitting, a statistic that has been cited repeatedly over the past few years, along with its associated health consequences. Spend more than 10 hours a day in a chair and you increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, premature mortality and Type 2 diabetes between two and five per cent.

Not surprisingly, 50 per cent or more of that sedentary time is spent behind a desk, which is the reason for all the brouhaha urging office workers to get up out of their chairs more often. The message, which is being delivered by health experts around the world, is simple — sit less and stand more.

Sensing a potential market to support positive change in workplace habits, desks that allow for both standing and sitting have been flooding the market. And with the intention of creating a healthier workplace, more and more companies are buying into the idea of making it easy for desk jockeys to transition from seated to standing postures.

By almost all measures, sit/stand desks work. Study after study has demonstrated that sitting time at work decreases when sit/stand desks replace traditional desks. While sitting gets its bad rap because of the lack of muscular activity, are the muscles getting any better of a workout standing or are you just replacing one sedentary activity for another? And does more time standing at work result in more time sitting at home?

To find out just how much movement sit/stand desks actually generate, a Portuguese research team measured the energy expended during 10-minute bouts of sitting, standing and sitting to standing — a movement estimated to occur between 40-60 times a day.

It turns out that the difference in energy burn between both static postures is pretty small. The researchers estimate men will burn eight per cent more calories standing versus sitting, while women will increase their calorie burn by six per cent. Put into practice, however, the numbers don’t do much to promote standing as a worthwhile replacement for sitting.

“If an individual would theoretically expend 50 per cent of an eight hour working day standing, an additional 20 calories (men) and 12 calories (women) per working day or 100 calories (men) and 57 calories (women) in a five day working week would be spent,” said the researchers in their study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, February 2016.

Keep in mind that the above equation is based on standing four hours a day — an ambitious goal for people who are more inclined to sit. How ambitious? Several studies suggest that sit/stand desks result in just over an hour of extra standing a day, which translates to a boost in energy expenditure of just five extra calories a day.

But a negligible calorie burn isn’t the only issue at hand. There’s worry that more time spent standing at work may result in more time spent sitting the rest of the day. The premise is based on a theory that suggests when physical activity is increased or decreased in one area there will be a compensatory effect in another.

As it turns out, there’s evidence suggesting the theory holds true — at least among the sitting masses. When researchers put activity monitors on office workers using sit/stand desks, the end result was more standing during the workday, but more sitting after 5 p.m.

It’s not all bad news, however. Despite less after-work activity, the researchers discovered that total time spent sitting actually dropped below the health threshold of 10 hours a day.

What does all this research tell us? Well, beyond the fact that there appears to be some merit to using sit/stand desks, there’s room for even more change to the average day at the office.

First, keep in mind that the goal of getting out of your chair more often is to get the muscles working and the blood flowing. So it’s best to do something more than just swapping out sitting for standing. Get out from behind your desk and go for a walk. Or, as the authors of the Portuguese study suggest, incorporate more sitting to standing movements into your day. Set a target of performing 10 sit-to-stand movements per hour over the course of an eight-hour workday.

Take that same principle and apply it outside of working hours. Get up off the couch more often — and not just to head to the fridge. Spend a least a couple of commercial breaks moving about. Try 10 easy couch squats. Push up out of your chair to standing then lower your butt back down until it touches the cushion. Repeat 10 times every hour or so until it’s time for bed. Not only will you sleep better knowing that you’ve spent the day doing more than just sitting around, you’ll become an agent of positive change at home and in the office.

© Copyright (c) The Province

TRACY SHERLOCK
The Vancouver Sun

School choice has created an eastwest divide in the preliminary list of Vancouver schools being considered for closure, education experts say.

The open-boundary philosophy, brought in by then-education minister Christy Clark in 2002, gives students the right to attend any school in the province, as long as it has space. That change destabilized community schools from the get-go, says Charles Ungerleider, a University of B.C. professor and former deputy education minister. When combined with underfunding and the astronomical price of housing in Vancouver, schools are shrinking and boards are faced with tough decisions such as closing schools, he said.

Jason Ellis, an assistant professor in the faculty of educational studies at UBC, doesn’t think underfunding is the issue that is causing schools to close. He pins the blame for school closures on government funding for private schools and declining enrolment caused by open boundaries.

“I think that raises a question of whether good planning policy (should create) a market where schools compete for students and each school tries to develop a niche program to draw students from another,” Ellis said. “It’s a policy that I doubt the government will revisit because it has a lot of support from parents. But it has a price, and maybe this (school closures) is the price.”

Although the Vancouver school board said last month it would only consider students who live in a school’s catchment area when determining which schools to close, in the end, the district looked at each school’s current population to see if the entire student body could move as a whole to a nearby school. But the list of 12 schools to be considered for closure contains only schools on the city’s east side, with the exception of one small annex on the west side.

“(The number of schools on the closure list from the east side) is a consequence of having emphasized schools of choice,” Ungerleider said. “That itself destabilized the relationship between a community and its schools. There is a larger story here too: Vancouver’s population is growing, but not with young families because of the price of housing. This is a byproduct of that situation.”

The Vancouver school board agreed earlier this year that it would not sell off school lands, although it might swap or sell portions of school lands. It passed a motion on Monday night that it would not lease any closed facilities to independent schools.

Both Ungerleider and school board chairman Mike Lombardi said they have not heard any educational rationale for the government’s requirement that schools be 95 per cent full before seismic upgrades will be done. Both also mentioned that Calgary schools are 85 per cent full, and it is increasing capacity to reduce that number. In the past couple of weeks, the education ministry appears to have softened its stance on the 95 per cent benchmark, with Education Minister Mike Bernier saying on Monday that it is a flexible target.

The VSB has asked for an urgent meeting with Bernier to discuss the district’s $21.8-million budget shortfall for next year. All school boards in the province have until June 30 to submit a balanced budget, something VSB has chosen not to do, leaving the board vulnerable to being fired by the ministry and replaced by an official trustee.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Road trip! It?s summertime and the dollar is weak. It?s a perfect time to tour scenic B.C. and savour locally grown and crafted wine and cuisine.

? ANTHONY GISMONDI
The Vancouver Sun

All signs indicate this summer will be a big one for the Okanagan Valley. Where to go and what to taste remain the top questions. Here we focus on 10 wineries, plus a recommended single wine to taste at each.

All of our suggested stops should offer an enjoyable, highly informative visit while the wine we suggest should illustrate the philosophy and style of the winery. After that it will be up to the winery and you to make the most of your visit.

If you toss an empty wine carton in the back of your car or a cooler with ice, you should come home with an impressive selection of wines that are hard to come by outside of wine country.

Tantalus Vineyards calls itself the “new pioneer,” no doubt reflecting upon its original Pioneer Vineyards name when it was first planted in table grapes in 1927. Today it is known as the oldest continuously producing vineyard in British Columbia.

Owner Eric Savics is totally committed to the environment and that sense of stewardship drives how the site is farmed. The winery is the first in British Columbia to get LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) certification.

The site includes numerous green initiatives, such as charging stations for electric cars, unpaved driveways, naturally farmed vines, no use of herbicides and a 10-acre, natural dry land forest in the centre of the vineyard.

Tantalus has a partnership with Okanagan Similkameen Wildlife Habitat Stewardship to identify and enhance wildlife diversity, along with a vineyard beehive partnership with Arlo’s Honey Farm. It is a special place to visit and has a collection of indigenous art you can view in the tasting room.

Made by winemaker David Patterson, the wine to seek out is the Tantalus Old Vines Riesling 2013 ($30.35): Fresh, bright, beaming with acidity and wrapped in minerality, it will live for decades.

Lake Country is home to several wineries north of Kelowna and one definitely on the upswing is Ex Nihilo, where Chaos Bistro is packing them in with menu items like Unforgettable Eggs Benedict, Crazy Eggs and Ham or Chocolate Berry Banana Pizza.

Drop by and meet owners Jeff and Decoa Harder, and Jay and Twila Paulson and take note of their latest Rieslings and Pinot Noir. If you are looking for a late lunch with an amazing view of Okanagan Lake stop in and order a bottle of Ex Nihilo Pinot Noir v. 2014 ($36) and sit and watch the world spin by.

Nichol Vineyards was one of the earliest wineries to open on the Naramata Bench; in fact a section of the home vineyard was planted in 1989. Nothing has changed much today except for the reliability of the wines, in particular the Syrah which is now one of the best in the valley. All of the fruit is farmed within a few hundred metres of the winery.

At Nichol both vines and visitors get one-to-one treatment. With some of the oldest plantings on the bench and the Kettle Valley Railroad access road beside the winery it’s a historic stop as well. There’s no fancy tasting room or merchandise but they do have a covered area for lunch ( bring your own) and a picnic area for sun lovers. The lake views are amazing.

The wine to taste is the Nichol Syrah 2013 ($40). The fruit comes off 17 rows planted on granite in the northeastern portion of the vineyard facing west and south at 1,400-1,500 feet elevation. The vines are own rooted/un-grafted, mostly dryfarmed and the vast majority of work at Nichol is done by hand. The winemaking is natural and the wine, while not certified, is technically vegan. You can expect the Syrah to age effortlessly for a decade.

Much newer but equally small scale is the nearby Terravista Winery. Bob and Senka Tennant opened the winery tucked into a hillside in 2008. The original property name, Lone Hand Ranch, lives on in the vineyard name and it aptly describes the grapes (Albariño and Verdejo) that make up Fandango, one of the Okanagan’s most intriguing blends.

If you are lucky the Tennants may share one of the many recipes they publish to pair with their wines. Tastings and sales are available daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the wine to seek out is Fandango 2014 ($24.90).

At Okanagan Crush Pad you can enter the world of organic grape growing, concrete eggs and naturally made wine. The Summerland winery is one of the hippest stops on the wine trail and they have a wide range of still and sparkling wines like no other in the valley.

From baby doll sheep to chickens and worms you will learn what it takes to be sustainable and organic in the modern wine world and how those choices change the wine you make. Be sure to taste plenty of sparkling wine made by the effervescent Jordan Kubek, Okanagan Crush Pad’s sparkling winemaker.

The wine not to miss is the Switchback 2014 Wild Ferment ($29.90), made by chief winemaker Matt DuMayne. It is a Pinot Gris that was fermented on its own yeast in an 800-litre amphora, the way the Romans did it.

Okanagan Falls is a great place to explore local wines and I’m suggesting you make three very different stops in the area.

Synchromesh Wines is run by the Dickinson family. Alan Dickinson winemaker/viticulturist only owns 2 hectares of land and leases 7.2 but each of the seven Rieslings made there are worth buying.

The entire operation is terroir focused, and their sustainable techniques mean no-chemical farming, natural low cropping, extensive use of indigenous yeasts and no additives or manipulations in winemaking. The philosophy is holistic from start to finish.

It’s wineries like Synchromesh that will eventually put British Columbia on the serious wine map. You can get there before the world does this summer. The tasting room is open for the season every day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. or until they run out of wine. Try the Synchromesh Wines 2015 Thorny Vines Riesling ($23).

Not far away winemaker Dwight Sick and owners Larry Gerelus and Linda Pruegger are carving out a niche for themselves growing Spanish and Italian varieties at Stag’s Hollow Winery.

They have expanded the original 10-acre vineyard planted in 1992 to Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Vidal.

In 2011 another 18 acres of virgin land was purchased two kilometres north of the home vineyard and Shuttleworth Creek was planted with Albariño, Tempranillo, Dolcetto and Teroldego.

Like many maturing Okanagan wineries, Stag’s Hollow has found its mojo and is daring to be different and original and it’s all coming together. Try the Stag’s Hollow 2015 Albariño ($22) when you visit.

Over at Meyer Family Vineyards Jak Meyer and Janice Stevens-Meyer are hard at work with winemaker Chris Carson trying to bring a little Burgundy to the Okanagan.

In 2008 the Meyers bought a 6.9-hectare site in Okanagan Falls to add to an earlier 1.62-hectare site on the Naramata Bench. At Meyer it’s all about small lot, single vineyard wines made with traditional Burgundian techniques. Only 600 cases are made each year.

Earlier this year Meyer earned worldwide recognition at very serious Pinot Noir tasting conducted by Decanter Magazine in London for their Meyer Family Vineyards McLean Creek Road Vineyard, 2013 Pinot Noir. Out of some 80 wines in the blind tasting selected to be the best Pinot Noirs in the world there was one winner, two runners-up, 10 outstanding and 20 highly recommended. The Meyer ended up ahead of wines like Calera, Beaux Freres and was the only Canadian wine to be highly recommended by the panel.

Again the momentum is building across the valley, and seemingly as producers do less in the winery and more in the vineyard the wines are really beginning to express themselves in a positive manner.

You can buy the next vintage, the McLean Creek Road Vineyard, 2014 Pinot Noir ($36).

In the southern Oliver- Osoyoos section of the Okanagan Valley, take the vineyard and winery tour at Culmina Family Estate Winery, where the Triggs family will give a very personal, in-depth look at the property that sports some of the highest vineyards in the British Columbia.

They will take you through the state-of-the-art facility and finished with a structured, sit-down tasting in the winery’s VIP room overlooking the fermentation hall.

It’s a full 90 minutes and you will come away from that with a new appreciation of the Golden Mile Bench. Be sure to taste the flagship blend: Culmina 2012 Hypothesis ($38)

Finally, head for Black Sage Road just southeast of Oliver and make a special detour along the Black Sage Gravel Bar and visit the tiny Bartier Bros. winery.

Winemaker Michael Bartier is worth the price of admission, and his wines are equally talented. Bartier grew up in the Okanagan Valley and has been around wine and wineries most of his adult life. He works with his brother Don and they practice a very simple philosophy of winemaking. It begins with planting the correct grapes on the correct site and farming them as a 200-year project, keeping your fingerprints off the wine, and copying no one.

If you are on the fence about Merlot be sure to taste the Bartier Bros. 2012 Merlot ($22), it will change your mind about this misunderstood grape. The purity of Okanagan fruit in this 87/13 mix of Merlot and Cabernet Franc speaks to the Bartier philosophy in spades.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

The man who built Canucks? arena to be presented the W.A.C. Bennett Award Thursday

Ed Willes
The Province

Arthur Griffiths has been telling stories for an hour about his career, about the empire he built and lost, about the decisions that shaped his city.

Some are funny. When they first started looking for a second tenant for GM Place, Griffiths and his management team had their eyes on an Arena Football League franchise. The group met with Phoenix Suns and Arizona Rattlers owner Jerry Colangelo, who gave them this bit of intel: Toronto had three separate applications for an NBA expansion franchise. Why don’t you look into that?

This is how the Vancouver Grizzlies were born.

Some are poignant. When they were pouring the concrete foundation for GM Place, Griffiths placed a family photo of his four children — Stirling, Simon, Emily-Anne and Christian — along with his exwife Joanne, on the spot that would become centre ice.

That picture is forever preserved in the arena Griffiths built.

And some are just fantastic. When he was scouting for partners in the Grizzlies, Griffiths had a series of meetings with Magic Johnson and says the Lakers icon came this close to investing in Vancouver’s ill-fated NBA team.

“There’s a book here,” he says in a downtown office. “It really is quite a story.”

But is it a happy story or a sad story, he’s asked.

“It is a happy story,” he answers without missing a beat. “I know there are people, including friends, who say they’re so sorry about the way things worked out, but I know what a daunting task we had.

“My goal was to deliver that arena and the two franchises. The rest didn’t play out exactly as I wanted, but that happens. I’m proud of the fact I can look at that building and know we had a great team that made it happen.

“You can’t take that away. I wouldn’t trade away any of it.”

And, ultimately, that’s what makes this a happy story.

Thursday, Griffiths will be presented with the W.A.C. Bennett Award, the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame’s most prestigious honour, and the only wonder about this is why did it take so long?

Griffiths began working in the Canucks front office in his early 20s and was one of the driving forces behind Canuck Place. When his father and Canucks owner, Frank Griffiths, died in 1994, the son took control of the team and oversaw the construction of the Canucks new arena. That project came in at $165 million and was completed without public money.

When the Grizzlies were added to Orca Bay’s holdings in 1995, Griffiths owned an NHL team, an NBA team and their building, which became the working model for the industry. He also built an executive team that continues to influence the world of sports two decades later.

Tod Leiweke was part of that team. Today, he’s the COO of the NFL and the presumptive heir to Roger Goodell.

Tom Anselmi, the former COO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, was part of that team. Chris Hebb, a former v-p at MLSE, was part of that team.

Victor de Bonis, the new COO of the Aquilini Group, was part of that team. So was Dave Cobb, the No. 2 man at VANOC.

What else? Oh yes. He was the chair of the Vancouver 2010 bid committee, the group that won the Canadian bid over Quebec City — the heavy favourite when the race started — and Calgary. He was passed over for the presidency of VANOC, but without Griffiths and his team’s effort, there is no 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Add it all up and it is a remarkable record, one that should have led to bridges or schools named for him.

But there’s another part of the Griffiths story that isn’t as happy, that paints a different picture.

It includes a near bankruptcy two years ago, involvement with a dubious Internet company 10 years ago and a failed Bon Jovi concert slated for Stanley Park last summer.

He doesn’t hide from any of it. He believes his latest venture — a consulting company which is active in China in the run-up to the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing — is right in his wheelhouse. But when asked about his post-Orca Bay career and the popular perception that he’s drifted from project to project in search of something to replace the Canucks, he says: “I get that. I don’t have any illusions about what people think or say.”

And that perception was formed when he flew a little too close to the sun.

Looking back, the wonder isn’t that Griffiths lost control of the Canucks, the Grizzlies and GM Place. It’s that he assembled it all in the first place.

Yes, he was the scion of a wealthy family, but by the ’90s, the business of sport had outgrown the reach of a successful family business. Despite this, Griffiths — with his sister Emily as a partner — was able to buy the land on which Rogers Arena now sits, privately finance the construction of the Canucks new home and come up with the NBA’s $125-million US expansion while buying out his two siblings in the family’s sports holdings.

How did he do this? Sit down. This might take a while. The original plan for the Canucks new arena was a comprehensive $50-million renovation of Pacific Coliseum, which would have left the NHL team, according to Griffiths, “in an old building in an undesirable location.”

Arthur eventually convinced his reluctant father to look at a new site, and there were several considerations — the area where the heliport now sits on Burrard Inlet, Main and Terminal, the Beatty Street Armoury — before he settled on the current locale. That left the small problem of financing for the 30-something executive.

“I’d never taken on a project of this size, but I remember meeting with a banker from CIBC and he said think of it as a shopping mall,” Griffiths recounts. “You have an anchor tenant, the Canucks. You’re going to have sponsorship revenue, suite revenue, food service contracts — all of those things are creditworthy. I learned very quickly how to finance something that complex.”

Griffiths would eventually go to the banks on three different occasions. The first was for $100 million for the construction of GM Place. The second was for $60 million to cover the NBA expansion fees. And the third was to buy out the shareholders from his father’s holdings.

That left him over-extended, and he was aware things had to go well in the startup phase of the new operation. But he’d built a dream team of sports executives and when the Grizzlies opened for business in ’95, it all seemed possible.

“It was a fantastic time,” says Cobb, Griffiths’ CFO, who now works for the Pattison Group. “It wasn’t easy, but we were pretty young back then and Arthur put a lot of faith in us.

“Most of us were local guys and we cared a lot about the team and the community. We grew up together. For a lot of us it was the first big job we had and we were invested.”

Two years after the Grizzlies opening night, however, Griffiths sold his remaining shares to John McCaw, cleaned out his desk at GM Place and left his arena for good.

McCaw and his brother Bruce were originally brought in as 20-per-cent stakeholders in Orca Bay in the early ’90s and never intended to assume a larger role. But a perfect storm hit the fledgling operation and Griffiths simply didn’t have the wherewithal to ride it out.

The Canadian dollar tanked. There was an NHL lockout in ’94-95, a year in which the Canucks lost $25 million, and the lockout didn’t produce a salary cap. Griffiths anticipated the NBA’s expansion fee would run between $75 million and $100 million US. It came in at $125 million, along with an onerous expansion agreement that, in Griffiths words, “tied one hand behind our back.”

With Griffiths unable to cover losses, McCaw assumed a larger financial role in Orca Bay. The problem was his lawyer, Stan McCammon, assumed a larger role in the day-to-day operation of the organization, which led to such remarkable decisions as promoting Steven Bellringer to the president’s chair over Leiweke; firing Tom Renney as head coach and Pat Quinn as GM, then, a day later, asking Quinn to come back and coach; and the removal of COO John Chapple.

Of McCaw, Griffiths says: “John was a good guy. I made my deal with him to sell my shares. I had no choice. I was going to lose everything.”

He declined to comment on McCammon.

On his last day at GM Place, McCaw asked Griffiths if he wanted a goingaway party. Griiffiths said fine, but nothing elaborate. How about lunch?

Two hundred people would attend. Griffiths still has a photo of them sitting in the lower bowl in GM Place.

“That was really my team,” he says. “The Canucks and the Grizzlies belonged to the community. But those were my guys. That was an emotional day. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

Some 20 years later, Griffiths, now 59, has moved back to Yaletown and lives in the shadow of his arena. Griffiths Way is nearby.

Thursday night, he’ll be handed the same award his father received in 1997, an award which is given “to an individual who has made a significant, unique and lasting contribution to sport in the Province of British Columbia.”

Significant? Check. Unique? Check. Lasting? Check.

Like we said, a happy story.

© 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.

Les Twarog was interview by CTV News about this Heritage home at 1550 West 29^th Avenue Vancouver. The 1922 English Tudor has been vacant for almost 10 years and the current owner has applied for it to be demolished. The 11,710 square foot lot in for sale for $7.38 million which include plans for a new 6,700 square foot home.

Read more at www.theprovince.com/business/bc2035/unique+shaughnessey+house+facing+demolition+long+rich/11842861/story.html

Allison McNeely
Other

The Bank of Canada will cut its key interest rate to at least zero this year and could move toward negative rates to offset the crude oil price slump, according to Barclays Plc.

The London-based bank expects the Bank of Canada to cut its overnight target rate 25-basis points to 0.25 percent at its announcement on Wednesday, and a total of at least 50 basis points in 2016, Juan Prada and Andres Jaime Martinez wrote in a research note.

“In our view, risks are tilted toward further easing, which would imply negative rates,” the strategists said. “The experience of countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the euro area has taught central banks that zero is not the lower bound.”

Persistent weakness in the price of crude oil, softer than expected economic data and concerns about the Chinese economy are weighing on the Canadian economy, the strategists wrote. Western Canadian Select, an Alberta oil-sands benchmark, has declined by half since the central bank’s October policy update while the Canadian dollar has depreciated by about 10 percent.

The Bank of Canada last cut interest rates in July to 0.5 percent. Swaps traders are currently pricing in a 56 percent chance that the central bank will cut interest rates this week. In his October update, bank governor Stephen Poloz said the effective lower bound for Canada was about minus 0.5 percent, raising the possibility of negative interest rates.

Copyright © 2016 Key Media Pty Ltd

Keith Bates
Other

As an undecided voter, I made a decision that will help me out of my dilemma.

On my way to work, I have decided to vote based on the greatest number of signs along the roadside.

After making this decision, it was obvious to me who is the clear winner. I will be voting RE/MAX.

Keith Bates, Surrey

©  2015  Copyright   Black Press, Inc.

Heino Molls
Other

If I had a nickel for every minute I have sat through meetings for work or with various community organizations, I swear I would be a millionaire. I am so wary of meetings now that when people ask me to come out, my first thought is to find a way to not attend.

So here are a few thoughts for anyone who is thinking about holding a meeting at work or in their community. I hope it will be helpful and you do not read this as sour grapes from an old war horse who has been to a lot of community meetings and business-related committee gatherings.

To start with, you can’t meet with an overwhelming number of people. The ideal number of attendees is about six, and no more than eight. Once you get beyond that you have a recipe for pandemonium or boredom, depending on the dynamics of the people in attendance.

As you add to the number of people in the room you are making it more difficult to accommodate everyone’s ideas and the opportunity to have full and thoughtful consideration to the contributions of everyone attending.

More than 20 people at a meeting is not a meeting. You cannot have any meaningful back and forth discussion with those numbers. You can have a town hall gathering or a learning seminar that can be very productive but that is a whole different thing and a rant for another day.

A meeting with more than eight people needs a skilful chair to move it along. The success of a meeting depends almost entirely on the ability of a good facilitator and some good planning to keep it from bogging down.

The greatest challenge is always the inevitable one or two individuals looking to hoard the time of the whole group. Even with a good chairperson, a few strong-minded people in attendance can easily reduce a productive meeting into long argument.

Time is important, so setting out an agenda and making certain everyone receives it ahead of the meeting is critical. The chairperson has to clearly explain that the agenda must be followed and any discussion that wanders away from the topic will quickly be returned to the agenda item. Those coming to a meeting should know the agenda, they should be prepared to speak to those topics only and they should understand that they are not to digress.

Speaking of time, it is critical to move a meeting along and that begins with telling everyone to arrive on time. I realize that a person can be delayed due to unexpected circumstances and I can understand that at a meeting of 12 people, maybe one person might be late but not more than that. If you have a meeting of 20 people and five or six people arrive late, I would take that as a sign of arrogance and disrespect for everyone who came to the meeting on time.

Personally, I would say if you are late, you should wait outside for a break in the discussion or a stop for refreshments and then join the meeting at that time instead of coming in at your convenience, disturbing everyone with your personal arrival.

© 2015 REM Real Estate Magazine

NATHANIEL POPPER and NEIL GOUGH
Other

Stocks around the world tumbled in volatile trading on Monday, leaving investors to wonder how much government officials can and will do to insulate the global economy from the turmoil.

The upheaval in the markets began with another rout in China that drew comparisons to the 1987 crash in the United States known as “Black Monday.”

Concerns about China’s ability to be a powerful engine of global economic growth have added to worries about the potential impact of higher interest rates in the United States, driving stocks sharply lower in Asia and Europe.

But early Tuesday, after a three-day rout that erased nearly $3 trillion in value from stocks globally, markets showed signs that selling pressures were easing.

Volatility continued to dominate early trading in Asia, but many regional markets swung from losses to gains on Tuesday for the first time in days. Stocks in Japan opened sharply lower but had recovered by late morning, while shares in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea were staging a modest rally.

Across Asia, the free-fall of the past few days appeared to have ended — except in China, where Shanghai stocks opened 6.4 percent lower after Monday’s 8.5 percent plunge.

The tumult has had many analysts grasping for explanations, given the lack of any significant new data that would explain the big market moves.

On Monday, the steepest losses in the New York markets ended within minutes after opening, with share prices spending the rest of the day sharply rising and reversing course multiple times. When the day’s roller-coaster ride ended, the benchmark for stocks, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, was down 3.9 percent. That left the index off 11 percent from its May high, in what in market parlance is called a “correction,” its first since 2011.

Beyond the questions about what exactly caused Monday’s moves, the recent market turmoil has now led many investors to turn their focus to the government officials who have become the most important players in the market since the financial crisis.

In particular, there is a growing debate among market participants about whether the Federal Reserve will still follow through with plans to push interest rates higher, an action that was expected to begin in September. The market turmoil has led some, including Lawrence H. Summers, a former chief economic adviser to President Obama, to call for the central bank to reconsider those plans.

“Everything is going to be dictated by government policy,” said Kevin Kelly, the chief investment officer of Recon Capital Partners. “Whatever noise is coming from policy makers is going to determine the next couple weeks.”

Fed officials could give some indication of their thinking later this week when they gather for an annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

At an event on Monday, the president of the Atlanta Fed, Dennis Lockhart, said that recent developments “are complicating factors in predicting the pace of growth,” though he said he still expected rates to rise this year.

Investors have also been looking to Beijing. Over the weekend, there were expectations that the Chinese government would take more aggressive steps to stem the recent declines in the Chinese stock market and the renminbi, the country’s currency.

Previous moves, though, did little to beat back concern about a weakening Chinese economy, and Chinese officials declined to do anything significant on Monday.

The debates in both China and the United States have often turned to more worrying questions about whether the levers that central bankers use to influence the markets are losing their power after years of extensive intervention.

With all the hand-wringing, however, many investment advisers have been urging clients to ignore the recent swings.

And although a number of American companies stand to be hurt by any weakness in China, recent data has suggested that the economy in the United States is continuing to gain strength.

Even apart from the problems in China, many analysts have said that high-flying American stocks were due for a pause after the steady upward climb that has characterized the American stock market over the last four years.

Still, the violent swings in stocks have left many investors unnerved.

“We take the sell-off very seriously as this unfamiliar mix of emerging market uncertainty, deflationary pressure, central bank interference and extreme volatility is hard for global markets to digest,” Mark Haefele, the chief investment officer for the UBS wealth management arm, wrote in a note to clients.

Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, theVix, rose Monday morning to its highest level since 2009.On Monday, the Shanghai composite index closed down 8.5 percent. In Europe, benchmark indexes in Germany, Britain and France fell nearly 5 percent or more. A number of emerging markets were also lower, with leading indexes in Brazil and Indonesia both down around 4 percent.

In the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 1,000 points before regaining ground. It ended the day down 3.6 percent, or 588.40 points, to 15,871.35. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3.9 percent, or 77.68 points, to 1,893.21. The Nasdaq composite index closed down 3.8 percent, 179.79 points, to 4,526.25.

The Treasury market was a beneficiary of the fear in stocks. The demand for bonds pushed the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note to as low as 1.90 percent before it settled at 2.01 percent.

The recent market tumult began two weeks ago when the Chinese government unexpectedly allowed the value of its currency to drop, partly in response to indications that the country’s economy is weakening.

The Chinese moves played into the continuing drop in the price of oil, which has taken the price of a barrel of crude oil down 65 percent over the last year. On Monday, the price of oil, as measured by a benchmark New York contract, dropped below $40.

Get news and analysis from Asia and around the world delivered to your inbox every day in the Asian morning.The selling in China has accelerated despite extraordinary government intervention in the last two months aimed at propping up share prices. On Sunday, the Chinese government said that the country’s pension funds would be allowed to invest in stocks for the first time. But the slide on Monday highlighted that the new policy, and several similar recent moves, have not been successful.

Many investors are now hoping that the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, will cut the ratio of deposits that banks are required to keep on reserve in a bid to encourage lending and spur economic growth.

In the meantime, there are big questions about whether China’s stock market plunge will make the Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest after that of the United States, even weaker.

Xu Sitao, the chief China economist in the Beijing office of Deloitte, said in a speech in Hong Kong that the effect on the economy could be muted because equities represent only 7 percent of the overall wealth of urban Chinese households, which continue to rely heavily on real estate in their holdings.

In the United States, too, economists were hopeful that the activity in the markets would not spread to the broader economy.

“For now we believe the positive factors will win out,” Mr. Haefele of UBS wrote in his note to clients. “But market shocks of this magnitude have the potential to overpower fundamentals so we need to remain vigilant.”

© 2015 The New York Times Company

Take nighttime habits seriously, neuroscientist says

Laura Donnelly
Other

People who boast about getting by on fewer than five hours sleep should be stigmatized like smokers because of the harm that fatigue can cause, a professor has said.

Russell Foster, a neuroscientist from the University of Oxford, said too many are trying to function with brain skills so impaired they could be drunk.

Studies have suggested that lack of sleep raises stress, which could lead to higher blood pressure and increased stroke risk.

Dr. Foster called for a change in attitudes toward getting an early night.

“There certainly is a culture of, ‘Well I only had five hours of sleep last night, how fantastic am I?’ In fact, we should be looking down on those sort of things. In the same way that we frown upon smoking, I think we should start to frown upon not taking our sleep seriously.”

The neuroscientist raised concern that sleep deprivation could cause risks not just in jobs such as health care and transport, where dangers were obvious, but also could damage the quality of crucial decisions.

“We see this too much with really senior people,” he said. “Lack of sleep damages a whole host of skills — empathy, processing information, ability to handle people, but right at the top of the chain you get overly impulsive, impaired thinking because of this problem.

“Look at banking, look at the recent decisions about the Greek crisis.

“We see major discussions going through the night, which have a massive impact, and decisions are being made when skills are very impaired.”

Margaret Thatcher slept for only four hours a night as prime minister, as did Winston Churchill during the Second World War — although he insisted on a two-hour nap in the afternoon.

Dr. Foster said late goers and early risers are unaware of just how badly it could affect the functioning of their brain.

“At four o’clock in the morning, our ability to process information is similar to the amount of alcohol that would make us legally drunk, as bad as if we had a few whiskies or beers,” he said.

In 2010, a University of Warwick study found that people who slept for less than six hours each night were 12 per cent more likely to die before the age of 65 than those who slept six to eight hours.

Dr. Foster said the evidence about the increased health risks posed by night shifts was also compelling.

Studies have suggested that working night shifts speeds up the aging process and is linked to increasing risks of cancer, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix