Blogs are abound­ing these days, and what’s unfor­tu­nate­ly miss­ing is an effec­tive way to orga­nize this new world of infor­ma­tion and to make it acces­si­ble to oth­ers. Until a good, large-scale solu­tion comes along (I don’t count Tech­no­rati or Google Blog Search as the real answer), some of this will get done the old fash­ioned way, the way Yahoo did it back in 1996 — that is, index­ing by hand.

Last week, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty launched the Stan­ford Blog Direc­to­ry, which hopes to index the col­lec­tive blog­ging wis­dom com­ing out of the uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty (fac­ul­ty, staff, alum­ni, etc.). This small list will inevitably grow over time. But it already includes some blogs (in addi­tion to Open Cul­ture) that you may want to peruse. Let’s high­light a few:

Smart Ener­gy Show: 6.6 bil­lion peo­ple live on the earth today. 9.2 bil­lion will be here by 2050. And, as time goes by, ener­gy demand will inevitably push toward a break­ing point. Smart Ener­gy takes a close look at how we can meet “this ris­ing demand with­out inflict­ing per­ma­nent dam­age” on our frag­ile envi­ron­ment. And it explains what sci­ence, gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als can do to meet this chal­lenge. The blog is writ­ten by Mar­got Ger­rit­se­na, pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Ener­gy Resources Engi­neer­ing, and the blog posts are often accom­pa­nied by infor­ma­tive videos.

The Stem Cell Blog: Writ­ten by Christo­pher Thomas Scott, this blog exam­ines the sci­ence, ethics, busi­ness and pol­i­tics of stem cell research. Scott is par­tic­u­lar­ly well posi­tioned to do this. He is the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford’s Pro­gram on Stem Cells in Soci­ety and the author of Stem Cell Now: An Intro­duc­tion to the Com­ing Med­ical Rev­o­lu­tion. Plus he has taught a course called Straight Talk About Stem Cells that you can access on iTunes for free.

Phi­los­o­phy Talk: Writ­ten by two Stan­ford phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, Ken Tay­lor and John Per­ry, this blog accom­pa­nies a week­ly radio show (also called “Phi­los­o­phy Talk”) that offers a “down-to-earth and no-non­sense approach” to phi­los­o­phy that’s rel­e­vant to every­day life. Along the way, the blog/show explores phi­los­o­phy that touch­es on our beliefs, rela­tion­ships, pas­sions and the world around us.

For more Stan­ford blogs, enter the Blog Direc­to­ry here. For more Stan­ford con­tent on Open Cul­ture, click here.

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Below, we have some links rec­om­mend­ed by our read­ers. Feel free to send oth­er good bits our way. The more we give, the more we get. Just click here to send:

• Sean Penn reads an excerpt from Bob Dylan’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Chron­i­cles, here. (Or check out the full audio­book ver­sion.)
• Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Col­lapse speaks at The Long Now Foun­da­tion about why civ­i­liza­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly endured or failed. Two impor­tant fac­tors include how they man­aged their nat­ur­al resources and dealt with cli­mate change. Does this ring any bells? Get the lec­ture here: (iTunes — Feed — MP3s)
• Ayn Rand’s Lit­er­a­ture of Cap­i­tal­ism. A piece in The New York Times explores Atlas Shrugged and its impact on Alan Greenspan.
• Inter­view with Hal Var­i­an, Chief Econ­o­mist at Google (and UC Berke­ley Pro­fes­sor), who talks (iTunes - Feed — MP3 — Web Site) about the inter­net as an “engine for democ­ra­cy.”
• Appear­ing in The New York Review of Books, this piece, enti­tled Cit­i­zen Gore, takes a look a Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Rea­son, and how Gore, being freed up from pol­i­tics, has been remark­ably able to prod the con­science of the nation. For some, how­ev­er, it’s not enough. Hence the recent “Draft Al Gore” cam­paign that has got­ten under­way.
• Check out the Voodoo Music Fes­ti­val com­ing up on Octo­ber 26, 27 & 28 in New Orleans. The line­up of artists includes Rage Against The Machine, Com­mon, Tiesto, The Smash­ing Pump­kins, Black Rebel Motor­cy­cle Club, M.I.A., Ben Harp­er, Wilco and more. To win pass­es to the show and some trav­el mon­ey, you can enter a con­test here.

An orga­ni­za­tion called Col­lege Schol­ar­ships is offer­ing a $10,000 schol­ar­ship this year for a col­lege stu­dent who blogs about “unique and inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about you and/or things you are pas­sion­ate about.” We’re not shilling for a nom­i­na­tion here, but per­haps you know an aspir­ing blog­ger some­where who could use the extra cash.

This con­test rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion: are there any col­lege stu­dents out there who sup­port their edu­ca­tion through blog­ging? It’s not a far stretch from work­ing part-time (or full-time) to help pay the bills, but blog­ging seems like an unlike­ly way to earn enough mon­ey to buy books, let alone pay tuition.

Steven Berlin John­son, of Every­thing Bad Is Good For You fame, has been at work recent­ly crunch­ing num­bers to come up with Amer­i­ca’s most blog-tas­tic locales. The results may sur­prise you–based on “place­blogs,” Boston leads the cities chart and Clin­ton Hill, Brook­lyn tops neigh­bor­hoods.

One aspect of Web 2.0 that seems to be just tak­ing off now is geo­t­ag­ging. Yes, we have Google Earth and the ancien regime of Mapquest. But more and more peo­ple are upload­ing geo­t­agged pho­tos, blog posts, et cetera, mak­ing all sorts of new projects pos­si­ble from the 9/11 Archive to HousingMaps.com. How long before geo­t­ag­ging becomes as ubiq­ui­tous as blog­ging is today?

By now, mil­lions of web users have watched Miss Teen South Car­oli­na explain in mor­ti­fy­ing fash­ion (see below) why many Amer­i­cans can’t find the Unit­ed States on a map. And, in their own unin­tend­ed way, her com­ments effec­tive­ly answered the ques­tion posed to her. Edu­ca­tion sim­ply isn’t what it should be in Amer­i­ca. And that holds true for many oth­er nations.

All of this sets the stage for explain­ing Open Cul­ture’s rea­son for being. Put sim­ply, we try to put peo­ple, no mat­ter what their age or where they live, in a posi­tion to con­tin­ue learn­ing and improv­ing them­selves. With the help of our pod­cast col­lec­tions, you can now start learn­ing over 25 for­eign lan­guages, lis­ten to over 100 audio­books, includ­ing clas­sic works in lit­er­a­ture, poet­ry and phi­los­o­phy, and take over 75 com­plete cours­es from some of the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties (MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Oxford, etc.). Our pod­cast library includes many more edu­ca­tion­al resources as well, and the best part is that they’re com­plete­ly free. Hours of free edu­ca­tion are at your dis­pos­al when­ev­er you want it. To ben­e­fit, you sim­ply need the desire and the will, and the abil­i­ty to use pod­casts. (If you don’t know how, sim­ply read our Pod­cast Primer. We’ll get you up to speed.) We hope that you prof­it from these pod­cast col­lec­tions and our dai­ly posts (sub­scribe to our feed), and, if they can ben­e­fit a friend, please let them know about us at www.oculture.com.

P.S. For those who want to bone up on geog­ra­phy, check out Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures on iTunes. This infor­ma­tive course was taught by Mar­tin Lewis at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.