I haven't seen "A for Andromeda", so I'll take you at your word, and comment on the series, since I think the premise is utterly absurd.

The idea that an extraterrestrial civilization would send out a "tough love" kind of virus, in order to teach us a lesson in cooperation, is incredibly naive. Firstly: if contact with an alien civilization is made, it's likely to be accidentally picking up a private signal on our part, and we'll probably NEVER understand the signal in itself. It's overwhelmingly probable that it would have totally indecipherable content, no matter that we could figure out that the signal is not from natural emission.

Secondly: Why the hell would another civilization, with superior technology to us want to help us at all? We're essentially shaved apes with thermonuclear weapons! We aren't much smarter than the animals we dominate. Our only real advantage over other animals is our ability to communicate through complex language, and even then we really suck at it. We can't agree on most things, and those of us who do seem to only be like minded due to meme viruses that pretty much break the useful parts of our minds regarding making advances to the human race (religion anyone?)

Thirdly: What do we have to contribute to a galactic society that they can't just take from observing our broadcasts? We pretty much have nothing to offer. We're insanely optimistic. In fact, we have to be irrationally optimistic in order to not be labeled severely depressed. Depressed people see the out of control nature of the universe and what happens to them, and realize that any event they do have control over are insignificant to the universe and 99.9999% of the people on earth, so they despair at the knowledge of their own impotence. This is logical, but bad for mental health. How fucked up are we that we need to think that we matter in order to keep from killing ourselves.

In all it's a crazy idea that any extraterrestrial civilization would ever want to contact us, much less carry us along, other than for pure altruism. And from all the study I've done of humans, the correlation between size of a society and altruism has a negative correlation as a society grows.

Just a few thoughts about the above description of "A for Andromeda". I'm going to look for it now and see if I'm just a bloviating dick.

we have always been at war with eastasia

You could also use them to spread plague. Although, using infected trained rats as a vector for an ancient disease probably counts as biological warfare.

That sounds elegant, but you gotta remember that Inter-Process Communication between human brains is so bad it's laughable. a hundred million fragments of Jobs, never able to connect into anything even slightly resembling who he really was.

My dad loves the French Press. He has a half dozen french press coffee mugs, where you dump the regular grounds in the bottom, and there's a strainer on a stick that goes through the lid. You add the hot water, strain the coffee down, and mash it with the mesh. Much better than instant coffee, and you can make it right in the cup you drink from.

I don't really see the difference between us driving the mammoth to extinction and the bison to extinction (If we did.)

We killed them for food, their skin and other materials, and as a right of passage. Money was used in the bison trade to obtain things that weren't available there already. I'm pretty sure primitive H. Sapiens Sapiens, and H. Sapiens Neanderthalis, both made things out of mammoths that they traded for things they couldn't make themselves. Like sex......Except for the Neanderthal furries. Those were pretty weird.

While I appreciate the jest, I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have mattered if the mammoth tasted like boiled gymshorts. They were FUCKING HUGE, and edible. Think about your least favorite food.... Now imagine that was basically the only food around, but in portions that weighed THREE FUCKING TONS. It's basically the only thing to eat, and if you don't like it, you can go without, get sickly, and die.

What if biodiesel users implemented a more viscous oil? Would that help? I'm honestly curious.

Wouldn't a higher viscosity oil dilute less quickly, making it last longer? Or would it still cause problems by not lubricating the engine enough, and letting heat build up from friction anyway, since the oil doesn't move as quickly?

Regarding Emissions:

Biodiesel is much better for the air. While it certainly does produce CO2 in nearly the same amounts per unit burned, it is unlikely to contain sulfur in measurable amounts. How much sulfur is in deep fryer oil, or sewage? Practically none, since it's poisonous. People don't eat it in more than trace amounts.

So while Biodiesel is still not great for greenhouse emissions (unless it's balanced. Plant a tree dammit!), it's great for the breathing air of critters like us, compared to petroleum derived diesel. And if you clean it so it burns better in your engine, it's going to be much lower in particulate emissions as well.

If sewage derived biodiesel is scalable, (and it looks like it might be), this could mean the end to all the shit we put up with going to war for petroleum.

But does it generate the same amount of bioelectricity as a "120 Volt Battery"?

I'd say a large part of America simultaneously believes birds aren't dinosaurs, and that birds didn't evolve from them, since they feel in their gut that life as we know it today is the exact same as it was when created by god 6000 years ago when the earth wasn't around, but the ocean was.

He obviously was not an expert, seeing as how asinine and totally wrong his concept of prior art was.

By the logic he used, (I know that batteries generally are unpatentable due to universality) a Duracell AA battery wouldn't count as prior art for an Energizer C battery, since they don't fit in the same devices, even though the do the exact same thing, with the exact same technology and materials with the only difference being size and manufacturer.

Lawrence Krauss wrote an op-ed pce in 2009 saying that the first humans on Mars should be older or elderly people.

The reasoning is that, since the elderly have very limited longevity they would be more willing to take the risk of a Mars mission, and be more accepting of the inevitable damage caused by weightlessness and the high exposure to radiation endemic to long duration space flight.

Since we have some medical techniques that can mediate radiation exposure (at least to some extent), and since reproduction isn't a going factor in the elderly, they would be the best pioneers for the exploration of Mars

Bill Clinton's Head in a Jar: "Hey, sugar cookie. You know, legally, nothing I can do counts as sex anymore."
Gerald Ford's Head in a Jar: "I apologise for his rudeness, ma'am. He gets this way around meaty-looking women."

You can use Prey to do it for free. It has SMS and web activation. And a stealth mode too, I think ;-)