I’ll start with a pair of items from Slate, which as far as I’m concerned has established itself as the pick of the litter among online, general-interest magazines. (I liked Salon until it became ideologically ponderous, at which point I stopped reading. Maybe it’s better now, but I haven’t clicked in for a while so I can’t say. Once a site is off my bookmark list, it’s dead. Slate wears its ideology much more lightly, which makes it a more appealing read.) But I digress. The first item is an entertaining mugging of former Duke University professor Stanley Fish, who has moved on to other ivory tower gigs and also now claims the title of “guest columnist” for the New York Times. The Slate piece, in its headline, poses this question: Was Fish’s account of his visit to a Starbucks coffee shop “the worst op-ed ever written?” The answer in a nutshell: Yep. The second item is an ode to sweet tea, written by a Georgia man who now lives in Massachusetts and misses his favorite drink. It also performs a service that every good essay should offer, which is to say it teaches you something you didn’t know. In this case, I learned that the measurement of sugar in a liquid is called a “brix.” That little nugget could win you a Jeopardy championship someday. If so, remember to celebrate with sweet tea.

As you probably guessed from the recent flurry of TV shows and specials about Princess Diana, we’re approaching one of those big anniversaries of her death. (This one happens to be the tenth, which brings me to today’s depressing thought: Every five years for at least the next half-century we’ll have to endure similar rehashes of her life.) If you’re in the mood for a little balance, context and perspective, read this piece, which explains that Diana was perhaps the last of those high-profile, train-wreck women whose appeal was rooted in the ability to project vulnerability. Marilyn Monroe was the epitome of this, but we now live in the Britney-Paris-Lindsay age of train-wreck celebrities, and vulnerability — real or, as in Diana’s case, manufactured — is not much on display these days.

Speaking of train-wreck women, British soul singer Amy Winehouse may or may not be in drug rehab — she was, then wasn’t within the space of a few days last week — but that’s all the excuse I need to link to another of her Youtube music videos. Which one? you ask. Why, it’s a bouncy little ditty called “Rehab,” and it’s got the best brass-and-saxophone line since the Kings of Rhythm were backing up Tina Turner in the 1960s and ’70s.

Al Gore should be proud of me: I’ve reduced the number of internal-combustion engines in my life to two.

As recently as three years ago, I had eight gas-powered engines to operate and maintain. At the time, I considered every one of them essential, but in fact I had fallen prey to engine creep. I’d come to believe that every challenge could be met with a new gas motor.

We started with two cars, one for me and one for the missus. Fair enough. We had different jobs and public transportation was spotty. Then we bought a house, and a lawn mower was required. There’s three engines. Later, we bought another home on an acre lot in the country, and that’s when my engine needs exploded. I purchased a riding mower because the yard was so much bigger, but kept the push mower so that I could trim grass around bushes and under trees. I also bought a weed trimmer because there was waaay too much edging to do by hand, and a blower to clean up after edger.  Those last two were available in electric models, but the longest extension cord available couldn’t stretch everywhere I needed to trim and blow. So both were gas-powered.

That spiked my gas-engine total to six. Then one September night, Hurricane Fran blew through North Carolina, leaving three trees down in my yard (one of which brought my power line to the ground with it). Suddenly, I needed a chain saw. That made seven.

Nine days passed before the power was restored at my house, a stretch of time during which life was pioneer-primitive — largely because we used well water, and if we didn’t have power then water wasn’t getting pumped into the house. We endured, but when another hurricane three years later left us powerless again, and with the anticipated Y2K disaster scenario approaching, I decided we needed a generator. By that point, I was in full survivalist mode. The rest of you fools might have been at risk from a worldwide computer glitch, but I was off the grid, baby.

That made eight gasoline engines. I needed three separate fuel containers for the varying required mixtures of gas and oil. (Four containers if you count the kerosense for my old-school heater.)

Without realizing it, I’d become a major consumer of fuel. I probably showed up on ExxonMobil’s balance sheet in the “asset” column. I needed to power down, but it took me a couple of years — and a move to a new home with a smaller yard — before I succeeded in reducing the number of engines significantly. But even with those steps forward, there was a big step back. In 2005, I bought a motorcycle.

At the time, I put a good face on that purchase by convincing myself (and hoping to convince anyone else who’d listen) that it was a fuel-saving measure. After all, motorcycles use less fuel than cars. But it’s only a savings when you ride the motorcycle to destinations for which you’d typically otherwise use the car. In my case, I rode the motorcycle to work maybe three times. Every other occasion, I was joyriding around on weekends, burning gas just to feel the wind in my face. I could have accomplished that by sitting in front of an electric fan.

So I sold the motorcycle this past weekend. Now I’m down to a car and a small lawnmower. If all goes to plan and yard work is no longer part of my routine, the number of internal-combustion engines in my life eventually will be down to one: my car.

I might even be able to afford a driver by that time. Al, are you still looking for work?

I’m going to get all Atticus Finch here and stand in defense of a man who has about as much chance of a fair hearing in the online world as did Tom Robinson in Maycomb County, Alabama.

The defendant is North Carolina journalism professor Michael Skube, who had disdainful things to say recently about blogging and those who practice it. After you read his comments here, you’ll understand why this was a reckless and foolhardy thing to do. Skube wrote: “One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt. Skepticism, restraint, a willingness to suspect judgment and to put oneself in the background — these would not seem to be a blogger’s trademarks.”

As you might imagine, those words did not go down well with my online comrades. The blogging world’s denouncements of Skube were swift and effective. This one was particularly sharp, and if public whippings are your idea of entertainment, it has links to other bloggers’ condemnations. Enjoy.

Taken together, though, the reactions made me wince. I know Skube, not well but casually, and he doesn’t deserve this all this. Thus I rise to speak on his behalf.

I’ll start by conceding one point: This wasn’t Skube’s finest hour. He has acknowledged in other places that he doesn’t much read blogs, including at least one specifically mentioned in his essay. That fact was a hanging curveball for his critics to swat out of the park. If you’re going to accuse bloggers of not doing much reporting, you need to be scrupulous about your own research. Dive into the blog world before you pop off about it.

In fact, after I read the blowback on Skube, I thought to myself, “Boy, the professor just got taken to school.”  But after another reading of the back-and-forth, I realized that once you separate the message from the messenger, Skube’s point is undeniably true. The blog world could do with more reporting and research, and less volume on the opinion. Furthermore, the list of reporting triumphs by bloggers that is detailed in the anti-Skube screed I link to above seems pretty thin when you consider the number of bloggers working. It’s hard to get an accurate count of the number of U.S.-based blogs these days, but it’s reasonable to say it’s in the tens of millions. In contrast, there were fewer than 55,000 people working in the newsrooms of American daily newspapers in 2005, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. And that number has only dropped since then. C’mon, Skube’s point has the ring of truth. Most bloggers are diary-keepers, wannabe pundits, linkmasters or hobbyists focused on a particular pastime. Real, shoe-leather journalism is the rare exception, not the rule.

Ultimately, I think the true rift here is one born of tone and respect. Skube is old breed, both in his approach to the craft of journalism and in his writing, which has a mannered, Victorian feel to it. I visited his class at Elon University one day earlier this year, and there were moments when it felt like I was in the presence of an English headmaster from another century. He emphasizes the fundamentals. I suspect that his attitude as a teacher of journalism is similar to that of an art teacher who declares, after a student announces his intent to become an abstractionist like Picasso, “Fine, but you’ll learn to draw properly first.”

Personally, I like the verve of the writing and comment in the blog world. But the best of it comes from people who were taught to draw properly.