A Tale of Two Countries, and A Question

Abstract

R ecently I was invited to present my paper: “Infrared Spectra Alterations in Water Proximate to the Palms of Therapeutic Practioners,” published in these pages, at a water conference held outside the Swedish City of Malmo. It gave me nearly a week to spend time with some intimacy with 60 men and women, most of whom came from the countries of Scandinavia, along with a few others, such as myself. People spent the entire day together from morning to night listening, sharing, eating and even partying in a modest way. It was inevitable that you drop your guard a bit in such a setting, and begin to speak to one another with some familiarity. Over the course of several meals two people, one a middle aged Norwegian water engineer, the other a 19-year-old college student, the daughter of another engineer who had come along with her father independently asked me the same question: “Why do Americans murder each other so much? No one can understand it. It's not the guns; we have guns. There is something else, what is it?” Not an unreasonable question. He told me he watched CNN and the BBC and could not believe the weekly mass murders. “How many he said?” “More than 30,000 a year. More than 300,000 between 2000 to 2010,” I told him. In one of the conversations we were joined by another Swedish man also