James Hogan's Personal Blog
Really really really get the pressreader.com appFrom The Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2026 Anthropic Turns Down U.S. on AI Guardrails The Wall Street JournalBY AMRITH RAMKUMAR Anthropic said it wouldn’t back down in a dispute with the Defense Department over artificial-intelligence guardrails, complicating efforts to reach a compromise ahead…
Stats NZ updated their annual national accounts for the year ending March 2024 today. These updates bring their GDP stats into line with the Annual Enterprise Survey and other benchmark data sources. The annual measures shake out as much of the data vagaries that plague the quarterly measures, and reset…
CAUTION: GORY PHOTOS IN BLOGWith sepsis and streptococcus infection to my leg, I could have died.Merci beaucoup Doctors Sylvain Rouches and Lisa McIlwraith. Merci New Caledonia’s health system, Allianz Insurance and SPC.Merci beaucoup to Rebecca for her care, my friends and everyone in the health care system who saved my…
As an Economist, this REALLY annoys me: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/560417/opposition-ramps-up-to-government-s-pay-equity-moveThe whole concept that you can look across different industries and try to equate remuneration rates without looking at the demand and supply pressures on the industries themselves is economic ignorance and massively annoying!For Economists, its like people claiming the Earth is flat…
Key Pay Equity CaselawWith a good head of steam built up, I dived into the main caselaw: Terranova Homes & Care Ltd V Service And Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc Ca631/2013 [2014] NZCA 516 [28 October 2014] (Bartlett Case), fully expecting to find another ugly piece of activist…
I’ve sold my boat, which I brought with John Wood and John Andrews.Here’s some happy snaps. I’m feeling all nostalgic… There’s nothing more certain in this world than the fact that everything around you that you know and love will change.… queue sad song
Regular readers of Sir Bob Jones’s blog, No Punches Pulled would have been aware that his last posting was the 16 April.For a prolific commentator like Sir Bob, not posting something for close to three weeks is unheard of.It was for this reason that I have been scanning the media…
Because when you have removed options for shared agreement all that remains are “nothing to lose” alternatives.And the world just witnessed American President Trump and Vice President Vance personally humiliate Ukrainian President Zelensky, and remove the Ukraine’s options for achieving a shared agreement to end the bitter war with Russia.The…
So awhile ago, in a moment of sickness, I Got All Creative and had a fun time at home one work day whilst feeling very sick. The best thing about the Fundamentals of Music website was the it taught the basics of music, keys, tones, scales etc.Well, now I’m in…
This is the bay directly across the road from my serviced apartment
So, here I am in New Caledonia. And as any right-thinking economist does, when they do their shopping, I’ve sourced comparative prices from New Zealand so I can check for systematic price differentials. 🙂Here’s the shopping bill from the local supermarket, Carrefour market, expressed in South Pacific Francs (XPF):I’ve typed…
So there I was…It’s not every day you find yourself in Fiji. Especially when this morning you were getting your kitchen installed, after your wife had just melted down about how bad the kitchen was.I bagged my stuff and tools of my trade and shuffled out the door of a…
I’ve long been an admirer of the Singaporeans. For the modern day equivalent of Greek city states, the Singaporeans have no lawrels to rest upon. They’re not endowed with mineral resources like Australia. They don’t have old money like Europe. They weren’t endowed with fertile lands like New Zealand. And…
Left by someone on a bench on Wellington’s waterfront.It’s much easier to wear a slogan than live a slogan🫤
My partner and I were coming back from dinner when I recorded this display of people-trash making public trash.Walking back from dinner, we had already passed two separate areas of homeless people, each camped out around Victoria and Manners streets.Before I snapped this tirade between three homeless, or whatever people…
Do you remember when your cat was young and new?You’d play with him, and he would come and cuddle with you. You were the most important thing in his life. And his fragility and new-ness to the world made you feel special. You might just be the dopiest prick in…
Stats NZ released its Consumer Price Index today. Booze & Ciggie InflationHere’s what’s been happening to the relative cost of your weekly booze and smokes.Booze and smoke annual prices increased approximately 1.6% faster than other goods and services between 1988 and 2009. All other goods and services increased in price,…
Woo hoo!!Rebecca and I are off to Brisbane for a week!!I’m hoping to catch-up with one of my best friends, Peter & Leigh Wysocki, and their family Trixie and Theo.Peter and I are going to the Nick Mason concert! And Rebecca is going to hang out beside an infinity pool…
Hot from the “Straight Out of ThunderBirds” file, comes the soviet Caspian Sea Monster Look at this baby!It’s called an Ekranoplan. Unlike other planes, this modified sea plane is designed to fly just meters over sea level, exploiting a aerodynamic effect called the Ground EffectThis beasty was created at the…
I’ve gotten myself a new drum kit 😁It’s a Alesis Mesh Drum KitLast week, I wasn’t feeling that great on Monday, so I took the afternoon off sick. Of course, with a new electric toy, my first idea was how do I connect it to my computer 🙂A few years…