Let’s find out if you can tell J.K. Rowling creations from irritating skin conditions.

Take the Quiz: Harry Potter Character or Skin Disease?

When I think of big statues, I tend to think of the Statue of Liberty and Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. In truth, though, those statues are positively dwarfed by some lesser-known statues. Check out these top ten monstrous monuments.

1. Spring Temple Buddha, 502 feet. As of right now, this Chinese statue is the tallest in the world. The 502 feet includes the pedestal the Spring Temple Buddha stands on. Together, that’s just a little less than half the height of the Chrysler building.

2. Laykyun Setkyar, 427 feet. Since it was erected in 2008, the mammoth standing Buddha (including a 44-foot throne) has become one of Myanmar’s biggest tourist attractions. It took 12 years to build. There’s a neat GoogleMaps view of it on VirtualGlobetrotting.

3. Ushiku Daibutsu, 361 feet. Weighing 4000 tons, its hand alone is 59 feet long.

4. Guan Yin, 354 feet. She protectively watches over Sanya, China.

5. Emperors Yan and Huang, 348 feet. Government funding and donations from private citizens of China helped to get a statue up of two Emperors who ruled 4,000 years ago. According to legend, Huang invented boats, carts and clothing. I guess that deserves a statue.

6. Sendai Daikannon, 328 feet. If you stood two Olympic-sized swimming pools on their ends and stacked them, that would give you an idea of about how tall the Daikannon of Sendai, Japan, stands.

7. Qianshou Qianyan Guanyin of Weishan is 325 feet of gilded bronze residing in the Hunan Province of China.

8. Peter the Great, 315 feet. Peter surely would have approved of a statue made to honor the Russian Navy, which he founded. But not everyone thinks it’s so great – the statue has landed on at least two “world ugliest” lists.

9. Great Buddha of Thailand, AKA Tian Tan Buddha, 300 feet. Unlike the other statues, this Buddha is sitting, making it the largest statue of Buddha in that position.

10. Grand Buddha at Ling Shan, 289 feet. What’s particularly cool about this 700-ton Buddha is that there’s a replica of its hand stationed nearby so you can really get an idea of exactly how massive the statue is. Pretty amazing!

Have any of you seen these in person?

by Mark S. Longo

Mascots. You gotta love ’em. England has its bulldog, France has a beautiful warrior woman, and America … well, America has a New York meat packer. But you know him better as wacky, stilt-legged Uncle Sam. Allow us to explain.

Sam’s Club

Arguably America’s most famous eccentric relative, Uncle Sam is a fairly recent addition to our national consciousness. But that’s not to say the United States didn’t have its fair share of political personifications before Sam came along. Lady Liberty was one of the earliest. Usually depicted draped in a toga and donning an elaborate headdress, she represented the blending of classical ideals and new world spirit. Another early mascot, Brother Jonathan, served as the face of the common man. Appearing in countless political cartoons, plays, and novels, his character applied homespun wisdom, acerbic wit, and a generous dose of orneriness to both political issues and pop culture.

Then came Uncle Sam, the famous face of U.S. Army recruitment campaigns. And fittingly, he’s an icon born out of a military contract. During the War of 1812, a meat packer from Troy, N.Y., named Samuel Wilson won the right to supply beef to the American troops. Wilson, apparently more genial than your average butcher-slash-military contractor, was known to his neighbors as Uncle Sam. (more…)

One of the great things about blogging for mental_floss is meeting people from all over the Web who have pantloads of talent. Some moons ago, I met Greg Tatum, and we brainstormed some animated shorts that would be appropriate for the blog here. I should say, he brainstormed and I nodded in agreement mostly. So welcome to a new mental_floss exclusive animation series: The Adventures of Mr. Rat. Animation: Greg Tatum, Music: Jeremy Engleman

There are plenty of fictional companies in movies and TV, mostly because things can get dicey when a real company’s name gets involved. Still, some real corporations appear from time to time. In this quiz, match the fictional character to the real company where they worked.

Take the Quiz: Fictional Characters, Actual Companies

Build Blog normally covers architecture and design, in their traditional, adult sense. But for the past few months they’ve occasionally dipped into tongue-in-cheek analyses of couch fort architecture, using photos of real couch forts built by kids, found online. There are now three essays: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. They read like design critiques of student work, pointing out flaws in the design, strengths of classical design, and often referencing design principles I’ve never heard of. My favorite is from Part 3:

Build Blog‘s analysis:

12. This unfortunate example documents the sprawling suburban dilemma of couch cushion architecture. The outspoken urbanist James Howard Kunstler would be horrified and it would appear that not even the designers will take up residence in their own project. Grade F

Enjoy a bunch more: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Next time you want to trip someone up in hangman, try using the word “jazz.” Mathematician Jon McLoone used a computer simulation that helped him uncover that “jazz” is the hardest word to guess in the game.

The reason for this is simple: shorter words give the guesser fewer chances to get the right letter, and vowels are the most commonly guessed letters. The least guessed letters are those that are used less frequently in the English language, such as j, z, q, and v. Given that 2/3 of the letters in jazz are on that list, the word ends up being very hard to guess.

Of course, if your opponent is a Flosser, they might be on to you now!

Image courtesy of Great Beyond’s Flickr stream.

Ever wondered how screenwriters do their thing? Lots of people have, and there’s a whole genre of books out there devoted to helping up-and-comers understand the arcane art of movie-writing. Despite all the screenwriting panels and workshops and books and DVD commentaries in the world — all the billions of words printed about screenwriting and how it’s done — when it comes down to it, most writers are relatively private about the nitty-gritty of their process.

That’s why I love reading John August’s blog. August’s credits include Big Fish, Go, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Prince of Persia and Corpse Bride, among others (so he’s definitely not one of the many screenwriting book authors or teachers with flimsy/ancient credits) and one of the best things about his blog are the videos he’s been making. They’re essentially long-form screen captures of John writing or editing scenes, and talking as he does it. It really gets you into the mind-flow of a writer to watch what he types as he types it — mistakes and all — and I think it’s often better than any screenwriting book/class/whatever. One of my favorites is his most recent, in which he takes a scene from a screenplay written by a fellow at one of last year’s Sundance labs (in which promising young folk come and work on their material with bigshot industry mentors) and makes it, to my mind anyway, better. (The scene was written by Lance Edmand, from a yet-unfilmed movie called Bluebird.)

So here’s how to take a good scene and make it better. It takes eighteen minutes — that’s fast for a scene rewrite! But hey, that’s why he gets the big bucks.

Writing better dialogue from John August on Vimeo.

September is here, and right on schedule. When the month arrived, my trivial brain got right to work, wondering why September is the only month with two common abbreviations (Sep. and Sept.). While I didn’t know the answer, it did help me come up with today’s Brain Game.

Only two standard English words fit the pattern

_ _ _ _ S E P _ _ _ _

One of them is “antiseptics.”

What’s the other?