Sure, but the numbers aren't as fun that way.

So, there's $20,580 in one monopoly game (http://www.monopoly-man.com/money/). At $16.63 for one monopoly game (http://www.amazon.com), thats:

1e12/20580*16.63 = $1.2 billion

More fun with big numbers:
2.2 pounds/game * 1e12/20580 = 53000 tons
16 inches/game * 1e12/20580 = 12000 miles laid end to end

In principle its the same as a helicopter, but due to the reduced cost I would imagine you could put lots more of these in the air. I think that's where the concern is.

Not sure about airspace though, I would imagine airspace over much of the UK is pretty busy.

Anyone know what that fried out component is in the picture on TFA?

I don't think that one leads to the other. The eventual result of the mutation may be selecting in the sense that we only observe certain ones...that doesn't mean that it was not random to begin with.

Actually, you're on the right track.

For example, if you look at the triplet codons which code for amino acids, you can see that (in general) the more detrimental a mutation (such as positively charged residue to negatively charged), the more the codon has to be changed.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code

So I guess one can say that there is a mechanism in place to minimize the negative effects of random mutation. The mutations themselves are still random, however.

Obviously a great deal of nuance was left out of this and my previous comment. Genetics is big, and really can't be done justice in a /. thread.

Epigenetics, in my mind, is something different. To quote from your link:
"However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism"

It is simply control of which genes are expressed, not control of which genes are present in the genetic code.

Though, my definition of mutation could be completely off? Please correct me if so.

ALL mutations are random. If they are advantageous, great, than it is likely that they will be passed along.

Fuck this game. Seriously, I can't get ANYTHING done now.

Now I gotta go try and break this siege.

I'm using a unibody pro, so that must be it. The support is still pretty clunky though, I feel like it has more misreads than in OS X.