You might have noticed that Gramo sometimes writes in English, but if you didn’t, well, please, spare us from any “you’re showing off” comments. We’re not. Sometimes (especially after consuming moderate quantities of alcohol) this just comes natural to us and that’s just it.

Like tonight, when we were watching some podcasts from Boing Boing TV, Wired Science, Seed, GeekBrief.TV, MTV News and so forth. One particular show from the Sesame Street Podcast got us thinking. It was the one about the word ‘amazing’.

During the show, one kid was asked what “amazing” means. He answered instantly: “fantastic”. Now, we don’t want to sound picky, but that kid was obviously wrong. “Amazing” has absolutely nothing to do with “fantastic” whatsoever.

‘Amazing’ means “something capable of causing a certain psychological state; a state usualy termed as ‘being amazed’.” ‘Fantastic’, on the other hand, is something that is produced by the use of a peculiar psychological faculty – fantasy.

While certain fantasies do in fact amaze people, it is not necessary that they are amazing. In addition, not all the things or events that induce amazement are the product of fantasy. Actually, most of them are just unusual realities. That is, they are not the product of anybody’s imagination (‘imagination’ right now is just another word for “fantasy”, of course).

So, the kid was quite mistaken about the meaning of the word ‘amazing’. This we thought was a very annoying thing and his being something like six or seven years old was no excuse indeed. You’re never too young to be wrong, kid, so you should start learning some good solid conceptual analysis ASAP!

p.s. (for those of you who just skimmed through our post): Yes, this was self-ironical (it hinted at one of Gramo’s recent posts in Romanian).
p.p.s.: We don’t have a spell-checker installed yet, so please don’t make a big fuss if you find any typos, ok?