Sacred values, and the taboos that protect them, can be attached to resources that we decide are genuinely precious, such as identifiable lives, national borders, and the nonuse of chemical and nuclear weapons.

Enter the smiley face, the computer hacker's version of comic relief.

[T]he Japanese have been intervening to hold down the value of the yen, while Washington has been adopting a policy of benign neglect towards the dollar.

The village shop seemed to be a bastion of respectability but those in the know could obtain some very questionable under-the-counter material.