Sowing Seeds of Mistrust

When I taught "Word I" at my lib last night, I may have planted a little more than healthy skepticism in the minds of my students. I pointed out that they do not have to agree with MS on spelling or grammar -- probably, you can spell your own last name correctly. I may have answered one or two questions with "because MS thought it was a good idea to make it work that way." So when a student asked "How do we know it really saved?" after clicking the disk icon and not even catching a flicker in the screen to indicate that something had happened, I had to sheepishly encourage them to trust the software maker on that one.

Just finished reading: Unacustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri. Damn, what fine writing.