Rod privately suspected the Scots studied their speech off duty so they’d be unintelligible to the rest of humanity. - Larry Niven

A civilization has the ethics it can afford. We

She risks her own life, Louis thought, then blames me for not getting angry. An attention-getting device? How long has she been doing it? Anyone else would die young, with a habit like that!

The medical revolution that began with the beginning of the twentieth century had warped all human society for five hundred years. America had adjusted to Eli Whitney's cotton gin in less than half that time. As with the gin, the effects would never quite die out. But already society was swinging back to what had once been normal. Slowly; but there was motion. In Brazil a small but growing alliance agitated for the removal of the death penalty for habitual traffic offenders. They would be opposed, but they would win.