In his new book, "The Assault on Reason", Al Gore tells us how to hypnotise chickens. Find out how by reading the section on politics, pundits, and the modern media.

Does this picque your interest? If so, read on.

The source of the paradox of knowledge standing side by side with psuedo-knowledge is that reason is a higher order faculty that can be rather easily subverted into psuedo-reason. The fact that one can read and write and speak in complete sentences, quote authorities and journals, and believe and espouse complex psuedoscientific arguments, does not prove that our faculties of reason are fully engaged. Further, working in opposition to reason, there are tried and true methods, employed consciously or not, but certainly habitually and repetitively, in which repeated incidences of passive exposure to today's pundits via media distribution tend or intend to intrigue us with nonsense. The bond between consumer and producer of nonsense is created and fostered.

How so, and also importantly, Why so?

Firstly, it is of benefit to the pundit, as as well to the ubiquitous media carrier to espouse and carry such nonsense. Nonsense is easy to produce, can be produced in great volume and with vast repetition, and it sells, rewards the producer, because readers and viewers enjoy the experience of being placed in a semi-trance state. It is a natural state but with sufficient soft prodding can also become an acquired pleasure.

Consumers in a semi-trance state will read or view almost anything set constantly before them and with sufficient repetition and exposure will tend to believe the content.

To coin a descriptive term, I will call this phenomenon, Cereal Box Syndrome. It is likely a distant cousin to the phenomenon of Chicken Hypnosis but is of a somewhat higher order on the scales of neurological evolution since it involves language, attitudes, and acquired beliefs.

The simple antidote in the case of a hypnotised chicken is to grasp the bird in the right hand like a football, and throw forward in a smooth flowing motion. The spell is immediately broken and the bird flys away unharmed.

I leave it to science to more clearly elucidate the antidote for what I have labeled Cereal Box Syndrome, but which certainly is more dangerously pervasive and subtle than the effects of chicken hypnosis.

Fortunately and in summary we can be assured, there is a vaguely remembered but sure and certain cure for CBS, and it is, to state simply:

Reasoning. Pure and simple, wide awake, Reasoning.