I stumbled upon an attractive & simple to implement non-random method that uses the golden angle (an angle commonly observed in plant phyllotaxy) -- drawing a fibonacci spiral on the sphere while maintaining a constant surface area. It is demonstrated here, on the open processing website.

http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/41142

  n = number of points
  phi = (sqrt(5)+1)/2 - 1
  ga = phi * 2 * PI

  for each point i (1..n)
    longitude = ga*i
    latitude = asin(-1 + 2*i/n)