Babies don't seem very cryey these days. In the last few weeks I have held and otherwise interacted with a number of very young babies and none of them have been cryers. This gives me great hope for the very near future when just such an individual will take up permanent residence at my house. Since the last time I really paid much attention to the world of babies it seems that great technological strides have been made towards minimizing the tears and the tantrums. Oprah discovered this lady who can see sounds, and she in turn discovered that all babies make the same 5 shapes when they cry- in other words, they can communicate their needs and if you just buy her DVD you can figure out what they are saying. And if you know someone who already bought the DVD than you can just borrow it!
Then there's things called swaddlers. Babies apparently really like to be smooshed and trapped inside pieces of cloth that render them immobile. To me it seems like this would only increase the howls but apparently it reminds them of the womb or something so they just magically fall asleep. If, for some reason, imprisoning them in this papoose doesn't work, you can give them a teddy bear that has a device inside it that mimics the sound of a mother's heartbeat, as heard from inside the womb. Works wonders, they say.
And if all that fails, holding them, rocking them and making faces at them also seems to work.