Generating Novel Scientific Concepts

Zuska found an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussing how scholars generate new ideas, and a nice conversation about it is going on at her place. I have some ideas of my own that have been expressed to some extent in the course of that conversation, but I thought I would collect them and organize them here.

Race in Science at ScienceOnline09

The not-just-for-science-bloggers-anymore, thank you, conference ScienceOnline09 is scheduled to include a session on Race in Science moderated/facilitated by Danielle Lee (Urban Science Adventures) and Samia Ansari (49 percent).
The blurb describes the session as follows:

The issues of gender and race are related and have overlaps, yet there are differences as well that need to be explored. If there is no profile picture, most readers will automatically assume that the author is white. What can be done to promote minorities blogging? How can blogs by minorities be used to attract kids into science careers? How to get and make allies? What allies can and should be doing? How the Web provides new methods and means for action and effecting positive change.

Preliminary posts soliciting contributions from readers have been posted by Danielle Lee here and here and by Samia Ansari here.