Rarely have I read worse career advice than that encountered in Cecelie Berry's piece "Cheers for Tears". Crying in the workplace, except under extraordinary circumstances (i.e., you just found out your mother died), is completely uncalled for and inappropriate. This is just as true for men as it is for women (I have known more than my share of weepy male office mates, thank you). The reason is simple: work isn't about you. It's not where you go to let it all hang out. It's where you go to get things done, and help others get things done as well. This fact has a very powerful corrollary: your emotionality may prevent others from doing their best work, so keep a lid on it.

All of this goes double if you are a manager or a team lead. Your people will be monitoring your every mood swing for clues as to the health of the company, the security of their jobs, etc. If you are blubbering all over the place just because you feel blue, you will not only lose the confidence of your employees, but you will greatly upset them as well because they will provide their own dire interpretations for your tears. Being calm and composed in all circumstances is what helps your employees in turn weather the storms of corporat life. Not to see that is pure selfishness.

Berry comes at the question from a completely self-centered perspective, seeing the ban on crying in the workplace as an affront to her free expression of the endless wonder that is her personal emotional life. It never seems to enter her mind that in the workplace you have to think about others, not just yourself, and that you're not being paid to embark on a program of self-realization. May I suggest a nice long Joni Mitchell playlist on your iPod, and silence in the cubicle.

-Niall Lynch

Los Angeles, CA

It was interesting to read through Ginanne Brownell's historical summary of the Kosovo conflict and not see mentioned even *once* that the bombing of Serbia carried out by NATO was carried out over an explicit UN Security Council veto. It was therefore, illegal and immoral. Also, nowhere is it mentioned that this was justified at the time on the basis of claims of "genocide" occurring in Kosovo that turned out later not to have been true (Finnish forensic scientists concluded after the war that the mass graves used to justify initial charges of "genocide" were actually filled with KLA fighters killed in combat with Serb troops). We now know that in fact the "genocide" in question was mutual, and that the Kosovars who at the time we were protraying as innocent victims were carrying out their own "genocides".

These are curious omissions. Particularly when the paralells to Iraq are so obvious. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the party line on why the invasion of Iraq was wrong is that (a) it was carried out without a UN mandate, and is therefore illegal; and (b) the pretext given for defying the UN (WMD) turned out to be false. Yet we see how the bombing of Serbia occurred on exactly the same basis. How can this not even be mentioned, even if the author would try different conclusions from these facts?

I smell a very strong double standard at work here. I'm surprised Salon's editors would allow such a biased and falsified account to be published. By the way I am not Serbian and have no sympathy with Serbias actions in Bosnia. However, Kosovo is a different matter, one with disturbing parallels to Iraq. Since this is so, I think this also calls into question the optimist expressed about how things will work out ultimately in Kosovo.

It's interesting to read a long conversation about the nature and truth of religion, without finding a real defintion of the thing under discussion. "Religion" is talked about as though its meaning was obvious; it is equated blandly with "faith" and with "irrational belief", as though they were all sort of the same thing rolled together. Yet what "religion" is is not by any means obvious or even historically stable. We live in an era where religion is defined as what we believe; whereas in pre-modern times it was defined overwhelmingly as what you worship. That's just one place we could start. It's odd to see someone pontificating about religion who clearly doesn't seem to know what is meant by that term.

Moreover, Dennett's call to "study religion scientifically" is humorous and not a little self-aggrandizing. It's a bit like saying we have to finally start studying human social behavior scientifically - odd to hear, because it's been done for at least 200 hundred years. The scientific study of religion is about two centuries old, and has accumulated a very wide body of analysis and theorizing. It's depressing that Dennett seems completely unaware of that fact, but also laughable.

Lastly, Dennett's response on the morality question is quite week. To say, "Well, religious morality changes!" doesn't answer the question of how we can base our worldview solely on what is scientific, if morality itself cannot be proven or established scientifically. Guess that's a question he didn't feel like addressing "rationally".

Dennett is sort of the William Shatner of philosophy: a blowhard who likes to make the unwary think he is brainstorming all these big new ideas, when all he's doing is recycling other people's ideas or ignoring the fact that these issues he claims to be championing have had champions for centuries.

Next!

-Niall Lynch

Lost Angeles, CA