Please say you're joking :P

And I was brought up like that, as long as it suits you it makes for a facinating childhood.
My youngest brother and I are both "very inquisitive scientifically minded young people" (geeks) and always full of useless questions. My other brother however is not "of the scientific persuasion" and it used to really annoy him. But hey, I guess that's what families are for.

No I kid you not. He is very inquisitive and I encourage that. He knows the map of the world better than most adults, thanks to his map of the world placemat. His preschool teachers learned not to question him about trivia, even if he sounded wrong bcause usually he isn't.

Yesterday out of the blue, in the car, he asked 'what is 365 times 165?'. Why? Well because a year on Neptune is 165 earth years and I wanted to know how many days in a neptune year.'. I was quite proud.

( he is not in preschool anymore obviously. First grade)

Hey, that works out pretty nicely! 365*165=(200*165)+(165*165). 200*165 would just be 33,000 (2*16.5*1000), and 165^2=(16*17)|25=, umm...256+16=272|25=27,225. So 365+165=60,225, right? Go mental math tricks!

Stukus
I'm glad you are not my kid.

@DJ: I didn't mean that bit. Those are indeed commendable attributes in a child and its nice that many parents support it (I would suggest any parent to be found on a diplomacy site), but school teachers tend to be less impressed of "little show offs" as it often comes across. I remember getting in lots of trouble when little for asking 'stupid questions' where stupid is actually just irrelevant, but the sort of things that do come to mind.
The thing I was laughing about was telling him North Africa exists by use of Diplomacy, that's mean :P Saying that if as you imply your child is rational enough to go question your comment then no harm. Don't suppose we can expect him on here any time soon though DJ? If he's got your diplomacy skills as well as your trivia he'd already be too good for me!

LOL, no I told him North Africa is not a country. Just like in the US, there is a West Virginia, but not an East Virginia. but he recognizes the Diplomacy map, so I figured he'd get a kick out of it.

I actually brought out an old map of Africa, just so that I would show him 'Western Sahara' and South West Africa (now Namibia) and 'German East Africa' and others.

Oh right, that makes more sense!
Yes, geography & names are very interesting (I always wonder where original names for things came from, eg the word 'toast').

When my older son would ask questions like that, I would always tell him, wih a straight face 'it was first invented by John Toast. Hence the name. '

You sound just like my father :/ (make of that what you will)
Taking that into account, be prepared for the day your older son teachers his little brother that gullible means wanting pudding, then proceeds to ask him (in-front of other people) if he's gullible.

Just to explain, my question wouldn't have been satisfied by that though, because I really did mean the *original* name. If you kept following it back and back what would you get to? Suppose toast was named after Mr J Toast esq. - but what was he named after?