Denis: I often talk to the dog

Feb 27 2009 By Denis Kilcommons

MY wife has been in Ireland visiting family for a few days and I have been talking to myself again.

I often talk to the dog when I take her for a walk and pass comments to myself on people I pass or on life in general, then subconsciously peer over walls or behind trees to make sure no one has heard me.

But when I tried talking to the dog at home she went to sleep.

Is this normal, I wonder? Not that I send the dog to sleep with my commentary on life around the house, but that people on their own actually voice their thoughts rather than keeping them in their head?

"I think it’s time for lunch. Now shall I have a fish cake or a ham salad?" might be perfectly acceptable in the privacy of your own kitchen, but it would be a strange state of affairs if you got so used to saying out loud what you were thinking that you carried on the practice whilst standing at the bar.

"Oh no, not you, you boring pillock. I suppose I shall have to be pleasant to you even though you send everybody daft."

"I don’t."

"You do. You’ve got me talking my thoughts out loud."

This may be a fanciful extrapolation, but scientists in Nashville, Tennessee, of all places, have brought the notion a stage closer to realisation. They have started reading people’s minds with an MRI scanner.

It is all a bit basic, at the moment, you understand, but it has been suggested it could lead to a mind-reading device that creates instant images on a screen showing the objects or scenes the subject is thinking or dreaming about which, in Nashville, could be a hell-child playing a banjo or Dolly Parton’s greatest assets.

But what if such mind-reading screens became as common as the mobile phone?

Then there would be no need for conversation whilst standing at the bar. You would simply check your screen and swap thoughts.

"Am I really a boring pillock?"

"Afraid so."

"Then we should get on."

"How do you make that out?"

"Haven’t you seen what everybody thinks about you?"

Perhaps we are not yet ready for mind reading devices – not if we want a social life.

THOUGHT for the day: If at first you don’t succeed, redefine