QUESTIONS:
What does Jesse Bregman mean by "building blocks" of life?  

Does the presence of water and methane (and possibly methanol) in the
center of our galaxy greatly increase the possibility of life other
than Earth's, or are there some other conditions that must be present
to utilize these gasses?  If other chemicals are necessary, will you
be able to detect those too? 

ANSWERS from Max Bernstein on May 13:
The term "building blocks of life" describe the simple molecules that 
have been observed in comets & ice grains.  When Dr. Bregman uses this term
he doesn't mean it in quite the same way that your biology teacher
does.  In bio class they really mean proteins and stuff that currently
make up living things.  What Dr. Bregman meant was that these simple
molecules were the starting materials in the primordial soup out of
which life developed.  It doesn't mean that life currently is made
of these things, as we're made of proteins.  However it seems
(based on our lab simulations) that there are also some larger
organic molecules on comets, perhaps even some that would turn
into amino acids (a piece of a protein) when they hit the ocean.

The second question is rather complex.  To begin with, the 
detection of organic molecules, such as water, methane and so on
are necessary but not sufficent for the formation of life.  That
is, if you assume that life will be carbon based (like us), then you 
probably need liquid water and an atmosphere around a planet.  That
planet can't be too far from or too close to the sun, or it will 
end up freezing or frying.  So you need water, an atmosphere,
the right distance from the sun, and you do need other chemicals,
as you said.  We have lots of methods for detecting these chemicals
(such as the Infrared telescope on the KAO) but in any case some
light is an absolute must to look for these molecules.  There is so
little light reflected even from planets in our own solar system that
its really tough to get spectra of the outer planets. So you can imagine
how tough it would be to get data from planets in other solar systems.
Of course dust clouds (which is what Dr. Bregman was looking at) are
easier than planets because starlight shines right through a cloud - 
that obviously won't work for a planet.