Chances are most of them, including a few of your "next-door neighbors", own at least a few shares, and what profits Coke profits them too.
That is so - the OP is mistaken to assert that most shares are owned by rich individuals. But the truth is actually worse: rich individuals get most of the benefits of owning all the shares at a fraction of the costs. That is because their minority stakes, by virtue of concentration, have far more influence in boardrooms than the diffuse holdings of the unwashed masses. This is a perennial problem (recent headlines are hardly isolated examples), and the main restraining influences are those pillars of capitalism, the government (which tries to protect the rights of minority shareholders), private equity funds (which represent groups of rich individuals) and unions (which pool the holdings of their membership to act like the rich individuals.)
I keep trying to explain that hackers are resourceful and can still find vulnerabilities without source code and before it's known to the public, but they deem that to be 'near impossible' and far too time consuming.
Ha! Yes, "if this is too hard for me to do, then probably nobody can do it." Another popular variation is "if I don't understand what you said, then you must be stupid."
15.469 / 14.309 = 1.081, for an annual compounded increase of 0.71% over 11 years. But that's in nominal dollars. The real value depends on the inflation rate you use (a contentious subject.) But for example, a inflation rate of 2% would result in a discount of 0.8043. Multiply by 1.081 and you have 0.8695, a total cut of about 13%.
Lastly, the ice age thing was based on an unreasonable methodology.
No, the science of ice ages is on a much firmer footing than the science of global warming.
Look, there are only two ways we can say anything about the future: induction and deduction. We have many observations on which to base conclusions about glacial and interglacial periods. Although there seem to have been only three ice ages in the last billion years or so, each of these comprises on the order of 100 glacial/interglacial cycles, with a consistent period of about 100,000 years. That is much better data than we can observe about global warming. Our theory to explain this cycle (the Milankovitch cycle) has certain problems, but it is far more consistent than our global warming simulations.
I'm not saying you're wrong about global warming; that's happening on a much faster time scale. But don't kid yourself - we're living toward the end of an interglacial period, (and toward the beginning of our current ice age.)
The case for species preservation should be made on hard ground, not on computer-generated squish.
Oh, the study was done with a gaspcomputer simulation? Well then it must be wrong. But you know, the quotations you provide strike me as human-generated squish. Try telling me why you think the study was wrong; if it's not worth your time to do that in a couple of sentences, it's not worth my time to follow your link.
Regardless of the details, there is a fundamental flaw in your method: you have assumed that the fair price of something is the same as the expected discounted future value. (You didn't mention the "discounted" part, but let's say that ommission was an approximation.) In essence, you have assumed that you can set a fair value by integrating over all possible future prices. This won't work unless you substitute the "risk-neutral" density function for the "real" probability density in your integration. The bottom line is that excess risk always requires excess expected value in the price.
Here is an example. Let's say that you know, with absolute certainty (God told you) that SCO has a 20% chance of bankrupting within a year. Let's say that you can earn 2% lending money to the federal government ("risk-free") for a year. The risk-free future value of $100 is therefore $102, and to break even you would have to charge SCO $102/0.8 = $127.5 1 year from now for $100 today. SCO would find that it is unable to borrow money on these terms - it would have to pay an interest rate significantly in excess of 27.5% to borrow money. Lenders demand to be paid for taking on the risk of default - the "market price of risk." That is the reason that companies like SCO issue equity, not debt.
The default probability that you back out of a market price for debt is therefore always higher than what the market thinks is the real default probability.
I accept that many people have had success with the Atkins diet, but it irritates me that this is usually "explained" by some nonsensical fable beginning with false premises (ably noted by the parent post.) To compound the annoyance, these stories are usually labelled "Endocrinology 101", or something of the sort, dishonestly implying that they are simply pointing out what we should all have seen for ourselves.
So I'd like to add a few points to the parent:
fat is your primary, most efficient fuel - even a starving person has enough fat to fuel an ultramarathon
fat is burned directly, not by being transmuted into glucose
however, fat can only be burned effectively by burning a little glucose along with it
the energy content of your stored glucose is relatively trivial - nowhere near enough to run a marathon
if you run low on glucose, you will use protein as a glucose substitute
this is what happens to marathoners who "hit the wall"
the starving person mentioned above will die of infection once he runs out of skeletal muscle and burns his immune system for fuel
consequently, although fat is the primary fuel, glucose is limiting fuel for endurance athletes - they eat pasta for primer, not for fuel
such athletes respond to training by storing more glucose and burning less glucose per unit fat - it is the sedentary person who burns glucose for fuel
although the fitness levels of international marathoners and bicycle stage racers are denied to us ordinary mortals, the marginal effects of training decline rapidly - we can get much of the benefit with a tiny fraction of the work
a state in which a balanced diet provides a surfeit of glucose is pathological
The parent post is good, so far as it goes, but there is an important point it did not emphasize.
If you buy a stock for $10 and sell it for $20, you make $10 (ignoring time value.) It doesn't matter (except psychologically) if the stock dropped to $1 in the interim.
On the other hand, if you short a stock at $10 and it rises to $20, you have a big problem, even if the stock later drops to $1. The reason is that the stock borrowing mentioned by the parent requires collateral ("margin") - that's cash, for the likes of you and me. Your broker will mark your position every day and make margin calls when necessary.
The bit about predetermined dates is a bit misleading, because you can always close your position early if you can find a seller. You can also extend your short if you can find another lender.
Finally, some people have suggested buying a put instead of shorting the stock. That won't work because A) there are no exchange-traded SCO puts, and B) no market maker will sell an OTC put if they can't hedge (by short-selling.)
Re:fun fun, but it's still not teleportation
on
Son of Concorde
·
· Score: 1
From time to time, businesses that operate fast catamarans in competition with regular ferries appear (and disappear) in the Pacific NW. The increase in preboarding harrassment (pretending to be an airline) is always exactly proportional to the increase in speed. Likewise, the Chunnel train is much more tiresome to board than an ordinary train. Even before 9/11, airlines liked to make you queue up for their convenience.
My point? If they ever do come up with teleportation you'll have to queue for three days to use the booth.
Let's face it, guys, cyberbullying happens here all the time...a few twits calling each other queer, indulging in the cyber equivalent of towel-snapping in the locker room, modding people down as "flamebait," "troll," and "overrated" just because you don't agree with them or they rub you the wrong way...
Porn & obscene insults are bullying. Being modded down (to +1 or +2) is not - it's not even unfair. If you read at +3, you will never see any of the former. You will, however, see plenty of worthless posts. You know, the posts that you modded up just because you agreed with them, or they rubbed you the right way, regardless of how poorly they expressed their thoughts. People who mod overrated posts as "overrated" are doing valuable work, as valuable as other mods.
There are plenty of posts that are completely unobjectionable yet are fairly rated at +1: by definition, the vast majority.
Honestly, I'm so tired of reading articles by people who never understood the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve.
Here's a free clue: when your working hypotheses are 1) "Everyone else in the world is a moron", or 2) "I'm missing something", guess 2). What unions, orthodontists, and CEOs have in common is that their compensation is not set by supply and demand: all of them, to some extent, set their own compensation. So it's not too shocking that their level of that compensation turns out to be on the high side.
(It might not be obvious to you how CEOs "set their own compensation." Nevertheless, it's true. CEO's don't just sit on their boards, they have enormous influence in determining just who gets those cushy board seats - and therefore, who sits on their compensation comittee. See any of Graef Crystal's endless Bloomberg pieces for examples.)
But for me to decree that they're "overpaid" means I think I have the right to prohibit thousands of people from purchasing sports tickets. I don't have the right to that kind of control over people's lives any more than I have the right to choose their religion.
Calm down. Nobody (except you) has suggested that armed force be employed to correct the situation. You're equating a simple observation with attempts to "control other people's lives". That's just silly.
Had you performed the miracle of actually reading the article, you would have noticed that you are completely wrong: the system will initially be installed at "about 35 bars and clubs."
Furthermore, some people have greater ambitions: "Bloor said police hope the Liquor Control and Licensing Board will endorse such a tool, so that all bars in the city would be required to use it."
Bill Joy was truly a visionary [...] Joy is such a luddite [...]
Why, exactly, is this comment moderated "Score:5,Interesting", instead of "Score:-7,Bus Error Core Dumped"?
Re:Mere logic screams that this is all oxdung.
on
Wall Street Meat
·
· Score: 1
The mere idea of a "travel agent" peddling tickets to clients... screams of illogicity. If the "travel agent" was really "competent", why wouldn't he travel there himself?
Clue: your broker wants you to buy or sell something because he charges you a fee for the privilege.
You're not quite as good as you think at being pedantic. A market-maker stands ready to make a market; that is, quote a 2-sided price (up to a limited volume) without a matching order in hand.
The parent post is accurate. Many of Taleb's stories are highly amusing, but they are also highly self-flattering. An unreasonable proportion of the book is devoted to explaining that although Taleb is an idiot, he is really a genius because he knows that he's an idiot. These excursions are accompanied by descriptions of tricks he uses to fool himself into being smart. Not all of this is entertaining.
The book has one other serious flaw which really merits mention in a review: it is very badly written. 'Meandering' does not describe the book as well as 'completely unstructured'. Also, there is too much repetition for such a short book.
The overall impression is that Taleb has published the notes for a book, rather than the book itself. With proper writing and editing, these notes would, of course, make an extremely brief book; but certainly there is material here for an instructive essay.
Not all words are created equal
on
A Word a Day
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· Score: 1
It seems to me that a 'word of the day' book must be closely matched to its readership. My wife once worked in a lab that employed research assistants in various stages of education. One of these was studying a 'word of the day' desk calendar in hopes of scoring well on the vocabulary section of an admission exam.
These words for the most part seemed rather quotidian - hardly worth studying. But one day the student was able to stump everyone:
Student: What does 'dreeahdest' mean? Everyone: I don't know. Student: Arid or stultifying.
The 'word' of the day was the phrase 'dry-as-dust'.
The example of the piano is a good demonstration that you are wrong. Of course nobody wants to dictate note-by-note to a piano. But the appeal of this image is specious.
As others have mentioned, the cool thing about HAL wasn't that he could talk, it was that he was smart. You could simply ask him to play a song, without having to specify the score by sound, touch, or semaphore. It is convenient to be able to request a song from the piano player in a bar without having to play it first. You might not even remember the name of the song, but just some words from the chorus. Speech is not the best way to communicate precise, detailed instructions, but it's ideal for getting the general idea across quickly.
Most of us have seen this in daily life. It is much easier to quote a snippet of code in an email than over the phone. But I have often cleared up half a dozen misunderstood emails with a five minute phone call.
To say that alternative medicine is placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes in an afterlife and a soul.
"Alternative medicine"? Oh no, dear - perhaps you meant "faith healing"?
To say that alternative medicine is a placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes, for example, that a random dose of digitalis from a powdered foxglove leaf is better than a measured dose of refined digitalis. Because after all, it's more natural.
It is also worth noting that those who believe in "alternative" medicine are very rare. More often, people practice "augmentative" medicine; they continue to seek mainstream treatment while taking their placebos.
Privacy for it's own sake is the whole point.
on
David Brin on Privacy
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· Score: 2, Informative
To them, it's just as harmful for a supermarket to know what salad dressing you bought as it is for a convicted abuser to know the location of the battered wives shelter. But this is obviously absurd.
Why is this absurd? The point is, if privacy is not valued for it's own sake, it will be taken from you when you really need it. Of course we don't need special rules to protect privacy when even Mrs. Grundy can see that it's needed.
The Anschluss was approved by an overwhelming majority of Austrian voters. Albert Goering, who did not share the political beliefs of his more famous brother, described how this vote worked to his Allied interogators after the war.
Voting took place in a large hall. In the centre there was a table, surrounded by seated officials, with ballots and ballot boxes. At the far end of the hall was a privacy booth. One approached the table and was handed a ballot with the Brinesque instruction that if voting "yes" (in favour of unification), there was no need for privacy - you could skip that long lonely walk to the booth. (Amusingly, the "Yes" alternative was printed very large on the ballot, the "No" very small. The Nazis weren't exactly subtle.)
Goering insisted on using the booth, but of course this was tantamount to an admission that he was voting "no". He could afford to do this because his powerful brother could free him from the clutches of the Gestapo (as happened on more than one occasion.) Most voters didn't have that luxury.
There was no way to argue the merits of privacy in the particular case, as Brin advocates, without arguing the case itself. If it had been possible to argue for privacy on a principled, rather than particular, basis, more people might have voted "no".
Contrast the CANDU reactor (there are other safe designs, but this is obviously the one I know most about). The moderation material in a CANDU reactor is heavy water. When you lose coolant with heavy water as a moderator, the reaction stops.
Not so fast. It is true that loss of coolant in a CANDU will not cause a runaway reaction. But that doesn't mean there isn't any risk; the problem is xenon flux.
As a CANDU shuts down, the neutron cross-section changes so as to produce xenon by transmutation. If the shutdown is not carefully controlled, this xenon can accumulate as bubbles, which act as an insulator preventing heat dissipation. It is possible under this scenario for superheated material to melt through containment and escape into the atmosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
Chances are most of them, including a few of your "next-door neighbors", own at least a few shares, and what profits Coke profits them too.
That is so - the OP is mistaken to assert that most shares are owned by rich individuals. But the truth is actually worse: rich individuals get most of the benefits of owning all the shares at a fraction of the costs. That is because their minority stakes, by virtue of concentration, have far more influence in boardrooms than the diffuse holdings of the unwashed masses. This is a perennial problem (recent headlines are hardly isolated examples), and the main restraining influences are those pillars of capitalism, the government (which tries to protect the rights of minority shareholders), private equity funds (which represent groups of rich individuals) and unions (which pool the holdings of their membership to act like the rich individuals.)
I keep trying to explain that hackers are resourceful and can still find vulnerabilities without source code and before it's known to the public, but they deem that to be 'near impossible' and far too time consuming.
Ha! Yes, "if this is too hard for me to do, then probably nobody can do it." Another popular variation is "if I don't understand what you said, then you must be stupid."
[...] the current reigning Demopublican party.
You know, that doesn't scan very well. I'd try "Repocrat" instead!
No, no, you mean:
Look what we found, in the park, in the dark
We will take him home
We will call him Clarke
We will take him home
He will Glo and Glo
Will our mother like this?
We don't know
# 1993 $14.309 billion
# 2004 $15.469 billion
15.469 / 14.309 = 1.081, for an annual compounded increase of 0.71% over 11 years. But that's in nominal dollars. The real value depends on the inflation rate you use (a contentious subject.) But for example, a inflation rate of 2% would result in a discount of 0.8043. Multiply by 1.081 and you have 0.8695, a total cut of about 13%.
Lastly, the ice age thing was based on an unreasonable methodology.
No, the science of ice ages is on a much firmer footing than the science of global warming.
Look, there are only two ways we can say anything about the future: induction and deduction. We have many observations on which to base conclusions about glacial and interglacial periods. Although there seem to have been only three ice ages in the last billion years or so, each of these comprises on the order of 100 glacial/interglacial cycles, with a consistent period of about 100,000 years. That is much better data than we can observe about global warming. Our theory to explain this cycle (the Milankovitch cycle) has certain problems, but it is far more consistent than our global warming simulations.
I'm not saying you're wrong about global warming; that's happening on a much faster time scale. But don't kid yourself - we're living toward the end of an interglacial period, (and toward the beginning of our current ice age.)
The case for species preservation should be made on hard ground, not on computer-generated squish.
Oh, the study was done with a gasp computer simulation? Well then it must be wrong. But you know, the quotations you provide strike me as human-generated squish. Try telling me why you think the study was wrong; if it's not worth your time to do that in a couple of sentences, it's not worth my time to follow your link.
Regardless of the details, there is a fundamental flaw in your method: you have assumed that the fair price of something is the same as the expected discounted future value. (You didn't mention the "discounted" part, but let's say that ommission was an approximation.) In essence, you have assumed that you can set a fair value by integrating over all possible future prices. This won't work unless you substitute the "risk-neutral" density function for the "real" probability density in your integration. The bottom line is that excess risk always requires excess expected value in the price.
Here is an example. Let's say that you know, with absolute certainty (God told you) that SCO has a 20% chance of bankrupting within a year. Let's say that you can earn 2% lending money to the federal government ("risk-free") for a year. The risk-free future value of $100 is therefore $102, and to break even you would have to charge SCO $102/0.8 = $127.5 1 year from now for $100 today. SCO would find that it is unable to borrow money on these terms - it would have to pay an interest rate significantly in excess of 27.5% to borrow money. Lenders demand to be paid for taking on the risk of default - the "market price of risk." That is the reason that companies like SCO issue equity, not debt.
The default probability that you back out of a market price for debt is therefore always higher than what the market thinks is the real default probability.
So I'd like to add a few points to the parent:
fat is your primary, most efficient fuel - even a starving person has enough fat to fuel an ultramarathon
fat is burned directly, not by being transmuted into glucose
however, fat can only be burned effectively by burning a little glucose along with it
the energy content of your stored glucose is relatively trivial - nowhere near enough to run a marathon
if you run low on glucose, you will use protein as a glucose substitute
this is what happens to marathoners who "hit the wall"
the starving person mentioned above will die of infection once he runs out of skeletal muscle and burns his immune system for fuel
consequently, although fat is the primary fuel, glucose is limiting fuel for endurance athletes - they eat pasta for primer, not for fuel
such athletes respond to training by storing more glucose and burning less glucose per unit fat - it is the sedentary person who burns glucose for fuel
although the fitness levels of international marathoners and bicycle stage racers are denied to us ordinary mortals, the marginal effects of training decline rapidly - we can get much of the benefit with a tiny fraction of the work
a state in which a balanced diet provides a surfeit of glucose is pathological
The parent post is good, so far as it goes, but there is an important point it did not emphasize.
If you buy a stock for $10 and sell it for $20, you make $10 (ignoring time value.) It doesn't matter (except psychologically) if the stock dropped to $1 in the interim.
On the other hand, if you short a stock at $10 and it rises to $20, you have a big problem, even if the stock later drops to $1. The reason is that the stock borrowing mentioned by the parent requires collateral ("margin") - that's cash, for the likes of you and me. Your broker will mark your position every day and make margin calls when necessary.
The bit about predetermined dates is a bit misleading, because you can always close your position early if you can find a seller. You can also extend your short if you can find another lender.
Finally, some people have suggested buying a put instead of shorting the stock. That won't work because A) there are no exchange-traded SCO puts, and B) no market maker will sell an OTC put if they can't hedge (by short-selling.)
From time to time, businesses that operate fast catamarans in competition with regular ferries appear (and disappear) in the Pacific NW. The increase in preboarding harrassment (pretending to be an airline) is always exactly proportional to the increase in speed. Likewise, the Chunnel train is much more tiresome to board than an ordinary train. Even before 9/11, airlines liked to make you queue up for their convenience.
My point? If they ever do come up with teleportation you'll have to queue for three days to use the booth.
Let's face it, guys, cyberbullying happens here all the time...a few twits calling each other queer, indulging in the cyber equivalent of towel-snapping in the locker room, modding people down as "flamebait," "troll," and "overrated" just because you don't agree with them or they rub you the wrong way...
Porn & obscene insults are bullying. Being modded down (to +1 or +2) is not - it's not even unfair. If you read at +3, you will never see any of the former. You will, however, see plenty of worthless posts. You know, the posts that you modded up just because you agreed with them, or they rubbed you the right way, regardless of how poorly they expressed their thoughts. People who mod overrated posts as "overrated" are doing valuable work, as valuable as other mods.
There are plenty of posts that are completely unobjectionable yet are fairly rated at +1: by definition, the vast majority.
Honestly, I'm so tired of reading articles by people who never understood the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve.
Here's a free clue: when your working hypotheses are 1) "Everyone else in the world is a moron", or 2) "I'm missing something", guess 2). What unions, orthodontists, and CEOs have in common is that their compensation is not set by supply and demand: all of them, to some extent, set their own compensation. So it's not too shocking that their level of that compensation turns out to be on the high side.
(It might not be obvious to you how CEOs "set their own compensation." Nevertheless, it's true. CEO's don't just sit on their boards, they have enormous influence in determining just who gets those cushy board seats - and therefore, who sits on their compensation comittee. See any of Graef Crystal's endless Bloomberg pieces for examples.)
But for me to decree that they're "overpaid" means I think I have the right to prohibit thousands of people from purchasing sports tickets. I don't have the right to that kind of control over people's lives any more than I have the right to choose their religion.
Calm down. Nobody (except you) has suggested that armed force be employed to correct the situation. You're equating a simple observation with attempts to "control other people's lives". That's just silly.
Had you performed the miracle of actually reading the article, you would have noticed that you are completely wrong: the system will initially be installed at "about 35 bars and clubs."
Furthermore, some people have greater ambitions: "Bloor said police hope the Liquor Control and Licensing Board will endorse such a tool, so that all bars in the city would be required to use it."
[Dogbert the investment banker to CEO]: "I can help you loot this place and escape."
Joy is such a luddite [...]
Why, exactly, is this comment moderated "Score:5,Interesting", instead of "Score:-7,Bus Error Core Dumped"?
The mere idea of a "travel agent" peddling tickets to clients ... screams of illogicity. If the "travel agent" was really "competent", why wouldn't he travel there himself?
Clue: your broker wants you to buy or sell something because he charges you a fee for the privilege.
You're not quite as good as you think at being pedantic. A market-maker stands ready to make a market; that is, quote a 2-sided price (up to a limited volume) without a matching order in hand.
The parent post is accurate. Many of Taleb's stories are highly amusing, but they are also highly self-flattering. An unreasonable proportion of the book is devoted to explaining that although Taleb is an idiot, he is really a genius because he knows that he's an idiot. These excursions are accompanied by descriptions of tricks he uses to fool himself into being smart. Not all of this is entertaining.
The book has one other serious flaw which really merits mention in a review: it is very badly written. 'Meandering' does not describe the book as well as 'completely unstructured'. Also, there is too much repetition for such a short book.
The overall impression is that Taleb has published the notes for a book, rather than the book itself. With proper writing and editing, these notes would, of course, make an extremely brief book; but certainly there is material here for an instructive essay.
It seems to me that a 'word of the day' book must be closely matched to its readership. My wife once worked in a lab that employed research assistants in various stages of education. One of these was studying a 'word of the day' desk calendar in hopes of scoring well on the vocabulary section of an admission exam.
These words for the most part seemed rather quotidian - hardly worth studying. But one day the student was able to stump everyone:
Student: What does 'dreeahdest' mean?
Everyone: I don't know.
Student: Arid or stultifying.
The 'word' of the day was the phrase 'dry-as-dust'.
The example of the piano is a good demonstration that you are wrong. Of course nobody wants to dictate note-by-note to a piano. But the appeal of this image is specious.
As others have mentioned, the cool thing about HAL wasn't that he could talk, it was that he was smart. You could simply ask him to play a song, without having to specify the score by sound, touch, or semaphore. It is convenient to be able to request a song from the piano player in a bar without having to play it first. You might not even remember the name of the song, but just some words from the chorus. Speech is not the best way to communicate precise, detailed instructions, but it's ideal for getting the general idea across quickly.
Most of us have seen this in daily life. It is much easier to quote a snippet of code in an email than over the phone. But I have often cleared up half a dozen misunderstood emails with a five minute phone call.
To say that alternative medicine is placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes in an afterlife and a soul.
"Alternative medicine"? Oh no, dear - perhaps you meant "faith healing"?
To say that alternative medicine is a placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes, for example, that a random dose of digitalis from a powdered foxglove leaf is better than a measured dose of refined digitalis. Because after all, it's more natural.
It is also worth noting that those who believe in "alternative" medicine are very rare. More often, people practice "augmentative" medicine; they continue to seek mainstream treatment while taking their placebos.
3. I forgot the third premise
... Profit!
Step 3:
To them, it's just as harmful for a supermarket to know what salad dressing you bought as it is for a convicted abuser to know the location of the battered wives shelter. But this is obviously absurd.
Why is this absurd? The point is, if privacy is not valued for it's own sake, it will be taken from you when you really need it. Of course we don't need special rules to protect privacy when even Mrs. Grundy can see that it's needed.
The Anschluss was approved by an overwhelming majority of Austrian voters. Albert Goering, who did not share the political beliefs of his more famous brother, described how this vote worked to his Allied interogators after the war.
Voting took place in a large hall. In the centre there was a table, surrounded by seated officials, with ballots and ballot boxes. At the far end of the hall was a privacy booth. One approached the table and was handed a ballot with the Brinesque instruction that if voting "yes" (in favour of unification), there was no need for privacy - you could skip that long lonely walk to the booth. (Amusingly, the "Yes" alternative was printed very large on the ballot, the "No" very small. The Nazis weren't exactly subtle.)
Goering insisted on using the booth, but of course this was tantamount to an admission that he was voting "no". He could afford to do this because his powerful brother could free him from the clutches of the Gestapo (as happened on more than one occasion.) Most voters didn't have that luxury.
There was no way to argue the merits of privacy in the particular case, as Brin advocates, without arguing the case itself. If it had been possible to argue for privacy on a principled, rather than particular, basis, more people might have voted "no".
Not so fast. It is true that loss of coolant in a CANDU will not cause a runaway reaction. But that doesn't mean there isn't any risk; the problem is xenon flux.
As a CANDU shuts down, the neutron cross-section changes so as to produce xenon by transmutation. If the shutdown is not carefully controlled, this xenon can accumulate as bubbles, which act as an insulator preventing heat dissipation. It is possible under this scenario for superheated material to melt through containment and escape into the atmosphere.