"Critical Update" to remove a symbol?

Wow, do we live in strange times, or what? I just received notification of a “Critical Update” to remove a symbol from the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font. Turns out it's to remove a swastika, one of the oldest known symbols. The “Typographica” journal has an interesting thread on this issue. It also made the Business 2.0 “Dumb and dumber moments in tech” list for 2003, so I'm assuming this issue isn't news to many people. But as someone who has managed to avoid all the PC stupidity, I thought I was immune to this stuff. <sigh>

What makes this even more timely for me is that I just finished reading Dan Brown's huge bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” which discusses in depth how the Catholic church appropriated the pagan (you have to read the book) cross symbol. Amazing stuff. However, I've also read Brown's earlier book “Digital Fortress” which contains so much gibberish about computing and cryptography that I simply have to wonder how much of this is accurate.

Can you imagine the phenomenal loss of productivity if some terror group managed to establish the “=“ character as their symbol?