It's part of an early Chinese time telling mechanism and with drop marbles from it's mouth with regular intervals which would indicate the passed time

Here's the thing, all you hurt I-heart-Palin afficionados..Do you really visit Neatorama for the politics? No, you don't. You visit it for it's unwavering and constant awesomeness. So if you don't like the (presumed) political inclination of the makers you either figure the site is still pretty damn amazing in non-political posts or you jusy go ahead drag your butt over to www.foxnews.com and try to be amused there..

People have different opinions, deal with it