Just finished my last lecture. I’m exhausted and giddy at the same time. This last week of work has been a tough slog, so I required lots of breaks to keep going. I played some dumb online games and also read vast numbers of articles on that creep in Austria who kept his daughter and her children in a basement for 24 years.

We were talking about the evil side of human nature in my political theory class today. This guy is a poster child for ultimate evil.

I’ve been following the progress of this woman and her children with great interest. I’m fascinated by the kids’ development of language skills, a side obsession due to my speech challenge kid. The woman, who’s my age, has been aged prematurely because of the stress of the her environment. The kids who were kept in a basement are seeing cell phones and elevators and other people for the first time. Is it overwhelming or exhilarating? Aren’t they like Socrates’s prisoners in the cave coming out to see light for the first time?

Apparently, Austria is getting defensive about its history of meglomaniacs.