Is it an exaggeration to call this an “epidemic”? I think not. If we look at the hallmarks of depression—anhedonia (loss of interest), fatigue, and a sense of hopelessness—and map them onto our national productivity figures, the correlation is staggering. We are a nation in a state of prolonged, untreated grief and systemic burnout. By pretending we are a “chilled” people, we ignore the high-cortisol reality of Jamaican life. We have one of the highest murder rates per capi

After decades of navigating the working world across four continents, I am forced to ask a more haunting question: Could a nationwide epidemic of depression be the primary anchor dragging down Jamaica’s productivity?

Our seismic exposure, hurricane vulnerability, grid scale and fiscal realities make FOAK SMRs an imprudent gamble. If we are serious about competitiveness, we must look beyond brute-force energy expansion and towards precision. The real opportunity lies in aligning Jamaica’s renewable trajectory with the emerging quantum frontier. Quantum is not brute force; it is precision force. This distinction matters for Jamaica. Our renewable trajectory — solar, wind, storage and

HANDCUFFS MUST REACH CONFERENCE ROOMS My dear friends, the relationship between elite impunity and street crime is not simple imitation. It is structural. Corruption weakens institutions, diverts resources from education and employment, widens inequality, and erodes trust. This unfair, unjust situation of corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse must be stamped out. No society can build durable prosperity on selective justice. • Handcuffs must become as conceivable in boardro

Norris McDonald’s article is superb: morally lucid and economically grounded. Dr Beverley Brown-Sands rightly defends its core truth — corruption is economic violence. Anyone, whether masked as Insight4Sight, Clirey, VXtruth, XAMYCA or otherwise, may write and look like a saint, but does not fool critical-thinking, evidence-driven citizens for long. Resources amplify echoes; they cannot sanitise a reptilian's rattle. Would you not agree that Jamaica must resist ever-smiling

A leader who voluntarily discloses, who invites independent audit, who answers hard questions without defensiveness, strengthens legitimacy. Transparency builds resilience. When scrutiny is welcomed rather than resisted, trust deepens. Conversely, when scrutiny is framed as hostility, when legitimate questions are dismissed as partisan attacks, polarisation intensifies. The public discourse coarsens.

Yours has been a faithful, disciplined, and luminous ascent. Jamaica and the wider Caribbean await your integrity, vision, accountability, and fearless national service.

Let us be clear: this is not an argument for cruelty, austerity, or technocracy without soul. It is an argument for adult seriousness. Small societies cannot afford cultural sludge. We do not have surplus generations to waste, nor slack decades to drift. Every cohort lost to low 'McGreror Gully and Taylor Land' standards is a compound loss. (Please refer to The Honourable Mr Desmond McKenzie who should, by now, be able to interpret what that means.) The Caribbean has no sh

Hurricane Melissa has given us a rare national gift: the chance to choose differently while memory is still fresh—while silt lines still mark the walls, while culverts still gape, while shorelines still bear witness. If we squander that gift, the land will not argue with us. It will simply remember. And one day, without ceremony, a child will ask why a place bears an odd name. The answer will come as it always does with follies: because once, power spoke louder than wisdom—a

When a society decides that wealth is the ultimate evidence of wisdom, it stops doing the hard work of critical analysis. We stop asking if a policy is sustainable and start asking who is proposing it. If the proposer is a billioneerer with a fleet of yachts, the policy is given a "wisdom premium."The expensive transport, the houses, and the raiment are tools used to maintain a hierarchy that prioritises "the look" of leadership over the substance of it. It creates a psycholo

For more than four decades, the Caribbean Examinations Council has been one of the region’s most consequential institutions. Beyond certifying students, CXC has shaped curricula, classroom priorities, parental expectations, and — quietly but decisively — the values our societies reward. It is precisely because of this influence that I write to you now.

For as ancient wisdom quietly reminds us, without vision a people perish — and empathy, patiently taught, is among the clearest forms of vision a society can possess.

Leadership worthy of the name emerges not from spreadsheets alone, but from disciplined moral imagination. Repairing the world order does not mean restoring some imagined golden age. It means recalibrating our collective compass: re-centering truth over traction, responsibility over reach, and long-term consequence over short-term gain. The academy also performs another quiet but essential function: formation. It does not merely produce research; it shapes minds...Read More

Hurricane Melissa again revealed the cost of centralised fragility. But, distributed rooftop solar offers households resilience where transmission lines repeatedly fail. When households generate energy, they gain protection from outages, fuel price shocks, and rising living costs.

Dr Jones is a Jamaican computational chemist and Senior Research Scientist at IBM Research, where he leads work in quantum applications spanning chemistry, materials science, catalysis, and polymer degradation. A Morant Bay High alumnus, he earned his PhD from University of California, Los Angeles, after attending Bard College, and joined IBM in 2010. He is internationally recognised for pioneering BPA-free plastics recycling and was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leadi

'Precisely three years and two days ago, my colleague, business partner, finest thought-clarifier, and most erudite friend, Dr Cynthia Elaine Lewis, passed over into Glory Land. She died suddenly on December 31, 2022. Toward the end of 2022, shortly before her passing, I coined the syllogism billioneering. Cynthia asked me—quietly but insistently—to define it rigorously. At the time, I did my best. It was not enough. What follows is a clarified Comparative Map: Billioneerin

We are providing practical evaluation of your college application essays, with guidance on improvements where warranted, up to 15 February 2026.These services are open to all interested students; membership in A-QuEST is not required. However, A-QuEST Y41 Doclings will continue to receive all of these services free of cost, as part of our ongoing commitment to this cohort. Conditions apply.

Dear Doclings & Parents/Sponsors of Y41 Cohort, I hope this finds you well and in high spirits despite the passing (re)birth-pains of Cat. 5 Hurricane Melissa. This Gantt Chart now supersedes the A-Q Checklist for the management of your entire Application Project, as it explicitly incorporates the scheduling realities created by the pre-, actual, and post-Hurricane Melissa disruptions to Jamaica’s institutions for the foreseeable future.

He said, Minott, stop it. Leave the Number 9 shirt alone. Get out of the way of the real forwards. And just like that, I desisted from my puerile vanity. I stepped back. It is a lesson Jamaica’s Cabinet Ministers—two of the women and nearly all the men—might consider before their next press conference or their next in-camera bright idea that becomes tomorrow’s national headache. The lesson is simple: do not wear the Number 9 shirt if you are not a striker...

Collapsed roads, failed culverts, unstable slopes, and flooded communities are not just the work of heavy rainfall. They are the consequences of political preference taking precedence over engineering judgement. This pattern recurs across administrations, but its effects become more lethal as climate risks rise...Read More