Jamie123

Almost as bad as "Who owns all the cows in the desert?"
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"The milk shaikh."

Brother, it's never too late to repent. The best people do it every day.

Indeed. Many Latter-day Saints attribute an almost magical power to bearing one's testimony. And I can vouch for the fact that, at times, an honest testimony can be accompanied by an undeniable spiritual witness to a sincere seeker.
But the main reason a testimony is a stopper is not always (or even usually) because the accompanying witness of the Spirit is so strong that you can't deny it. Rather, it's because a testimony is a take-it-or-leave-it statement by its very nature. Someone says, "I know thus-and-such to be true." What can you say? "No, you don't know that"? There is no head-on way to disagree with a personal testimonial. That doesn't mean you must therefore believe it, though. Realistically, all you can say in response is either "I believe you" or "I don't believe you". Or possibly "I don't know whether or not I believe you", which is functionally equivalent to saying "I don't believe you".
So, yes, testimonies can indeed be conversation-stoppers. I do not believe that is normally their purpose, though.

~~Trump and Anatess sitting in a tree! K.I.S.....*OOOF*
Ugh Anatess! You didn't have to hit me *THAT* hard!!

~~Trump and Anatess sitting in a tree! K.I.S.....*OOOF*
Ugh Anatess! You didn't have to hit me *THAT* hard!!

~~Trump and Anatess sitting in a tree! K.I.S.....*OOOF*
Ugh Anatess! You didn't have to hit me *THAT* hard!!

Does it ever have stories as surprising as this one?

~~Trump and Anatess sitting in a tree! K.I.S.....*OOOF*
Ugh Anatess! You didn't have to hit me *THAT* hard!!

Does it ever have stories as surprising as this one?

Does it ever have stories as surprising as this one?

Does it ever have stories as surprising as this one?

Every time a JW approaches me, I make sure to pay them the compliment "Nobody does a whore of babylon riding the beast, better than the Watchtower.  You guys rock!"  (For some weird reason, this puts about half of them on the defensive.  Don't know why.)

Yesterday, all the family were together in the the car listening to a CD of Michael Bubble singing Christmas songs. When he got to one particular song I had a brilliant idea for a "joke" to kick off the holiday season.
I described it, but no one thought it would be funny. ("That's just another Dad Joke!")
But I thought I'd do it anyway: just 5 minutes of photoshopping before work...I just need to get a picture of a clown and...oh...

That's right. Someone else had got there before me!
NEVER MIND - MERRY CHRISTMAS

Does it ever have stories as surprising as this one?

Does it ever have stories as surprising as this one?

Yesterday, all the family were together in the the car listening to a CD of Michael Bubble singing Christmas songs. When he got to one particular song I had a brilliant idea for a "joke" to kick off the holiday season.
I described it, but no one thought it would be funny. ("That's just another Dad Joke!")
But I thought I'd do it anyway: just 5 minutes of photoshopping before work...I just need to get a picture of a clown and...oh...

That's right. Someone else had got there before me!
NEVER MIND - MERRY CHRISTMAS

That appears to be an @mirkwood type Christmas card.

I also disagree with it, but I think it does date back to the Protoevangelion of James - 2nd or 3rd century, IIRC.
So a fable, yes—but an old and venerable one.  

The battle between William and Harold is not a "spoils of war" nor a "right of conquest".  The battle between William and Harold are 2 members of the Permanent Class battling over who gets to be King when the Permanent Class Rules of succession comes under question.  It basically amounts to sibling rivarly as the inheritance is passed by blood or marriage which is "My Privilege is higher than Your Privilege". 
This is completely different from the American territories as the Natives held no concept of "property ownership" after the fall of the Nephites and Lamanites.  They were nomads.  The American equivalent to the European gypsies.  Therefore, European settlers taming the land and establishing colonies is the FIRST historical claim to ownership after the fall of Moroni.  Of course, ownership is only good as far as one can defend one's claim to it, hence, the formation of the militia that kept Natives and other settlers out of the land according to the dictates of the land owner.
If you want to equate this to England genesis, you will have to go even farther back from the Heptarchy as even they already have established property ownership as they established Kingdoms - they simply went to war to claim other people's property rather than being the first to settle in an area and claim first ownership.

I think you're right - it's a sloppy formulated question, but that can have its advantages. It helps examiners separate the duller candidates - the sort of people who give lazy answers like "how long is a piece of string?" - from those with a spark of inquisitiveness and speculation. A better candidate will think "OK I don't have all the information I would like, but maybe if I make some assumptions I can still go somewhere with this!"

I think you're right - it's a sloppy formulated question, but that can have its advantages. It helps examiners separate the duller candidates - the sort of people who give lazy answers like "how long is a piece of string?" - from those with a spark of inquisitiveness and speculation. A better candidate will think "OK I don't have all the information I would like, but maybe if I make some assumptions I can still go somewhere with this!"

I think Jamie, Mores, and Scott have covered it pretty well.
From a modern perspective, the question is poorly worded, starting with the laughable (from a modern perspective) idea of a comet knocking half of the earth's mass away. Then there is the confusion as to whether the earth's loss in mass is effectively instantaneous, and if not, whether the mass left the earth along the axis of the moon's orbital plane or whether it was more along the plane. And, of course, the whole thing is silly, because any impact with enough energy to literally strip away half of the earth's mass would undoubtedly create a condition where the remaining earth was reduced to a rubble cloud, one that would then eventually recoalesce, almost certainly including the moon in its body. The moon would likely become the new center of accretion; it could hardly avoid being pelted by very large pieces of the earth's rubble cloud.
Jamie's proposed amendment is much better from a modern perspective: What if Harry Potter magically vanished away half of the earth's mass? As has already been discussed. it looks like the result would be indeterminate, with a good probability that the moon would escape the remnant earth's gravitation. Except, again, that's not a good answer if you take it further. Because the moon will still remain in the same basic orbit as it was with the earth, and the remnant earth will likewise remain in that same orbit. Both orbits will probably become somewhat elliptical, but they'll stay in the same general area, with their orbits intersecting at one or two points. So it's only a matter of time until the moon collides with the remnant earth or rubble cloud, and eventually you'll get a new, much smaller planet where the earth once orbited.
The first rule of solving any physics problem is to know what is being asked for. A probem like this is hard exactly because it's not clear what's being asked for. In this case, the difficulty is more precisely that you're not sure what the assumptions are supposed to be, and until those assumptions are clarified, you're not likely to arrive at a good solution.

If you had been brought up in England and your family was not particularly anti-monarchy then you would get it. To "Middle England" (by which I mean the conservative middle and upper-working classes) the royals are seen as a kind of extended family. People gossip/winge about them in the same sort of way they do about Uncle Jim or Aunt Jenny. (Right now Prince Andrew is the "disgraceful uncle" who's brought embarrassment on the rest of the family.) As a kid, listening to the way grown-ups talked about the royals, I sometimes vaguely felt they really were our relatives.

It reminds me of this quote from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.. The protagonist (a fictionalized Lewis) has a dream of arriving in Heaven, where he meets his literary hero George Macdonald. While they are talking, a lady approaches them:
 We learn as the story goes on that Sarah Smith was a very ordinary housewife who was kind to everyone. Every boy felt like a son to her, and every girl a daughter. In our world she was a nobody, but in Heaven she is one of the "great ones".

If you had been brought up in England and your family was not particularly anti-monarchy then you would get it. To "Middle England" (by which I mean the conservative middle and upper-working classes) the royals are seen as a kind of extended family. People gossip/winge about them in the same sort of way they do about Uncle Jim or Aunt Jenny. (Right now Prince Andrew is the "disgraceful uncle" who's brought embarrassment on the rest of the family.) As a kid, listening to the way grown-ups talked about the royals, I sometimes vaguely felt they really were our relatives.