Cronaca links to a BBC report that librarians are in general more stressed and less happy in their work than firemen, policemen, train drivers, or teachers. They don’t seem to have considered the possibility that unhappy people might be more drawn to library science in the first place. I don’t know whether it is true, but it is certainly conceivable that unhappiness is correlated with introversion, and introversion correlated with a desire for a nice quiet job dealing with books rather than people. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Some of my best friends — and closest relatives — are librarians. Are they introverted and unhappy? Not necessarily. I’m not making a scientific argument, just pointing out the gaping hole in someone else’s argument.

I’ve been following Mark Steyn’s coverage of the now-deadlocked Conrad Black trial, but I don’t recall him mentioning one interesting detail. He’s out of touch today and refers us to his Maclean’s colleague Steve Maich, whose latest report begins:

The jurors trudged past the pack of silent, gawking reporters on their way home again this afternoon, and the consensus on their body language was: serious.

My first thought was “Home?” – I had assumed that a jury trying a billionaire on charges that could land him in jail for a hundred years would be sequestered. My second thought was “I wonder if any of them have been surfing the web and run across Steyn’s coverage of the case?” Probably not: I imagine there’s a severe penalty for that sort of thing. But it’s an interesting thought, though perhaps better suited to a novel than real life.