Back in August, the Skull-a-Day blog (a new skull, every day!) ran this papercraft skull with moving jaw -- including a downloadable PDF so you can print and assemble your own. Timely! Link (via Paperforest)

Matt sez, "MissMonster has been creating incredible monster costumes for years. This year she's made a really intense werewolf costume all by hand. She's posted an in-depth tutorial on Instructables." Link (Thanks, Matt!)

O'Reilly Radar's Peter Brantley has a great rumination up today about the economics of print publishing in Germany (where all new books , used, new, damaged or whole, have to be sold for the same price) and Switzerland (where this stricture has been dropped).

Here then is a meaty nugget, because it discloses that economic policy impacts not just the range of commerce in books that prevails within an economic zone (such as a country); economic and social policy also impact what gets read, and by whom. If one can take the question crassly, then it devolves to the consideration of whether should our economic and social policies encourage a diversity of reading, or encourage the greatest magnitude of reading.

It is easy to oversimplify this argument: a nation that through its economic doctrines encourages the development of an oligopoly of bookstores begets a readership of mass-market book consumers, vs. a nation in which multitudes of small bookshops thrive encourages the development of a richer cross-section of arts and science. Historically this has been tied up in questions of selection and curation: indies stock a smaller range of titles, but with either 1) greater in-store variation across the types of authors and publishers represented, or alternatively 2) deeper exposure of a specific type of literature (e.g. show me a B&N that can match the collection of City Lights in San Francisco, or St. Mark's in New York).

Link

Watchismo has a nice little feature on Mary Queen of Scots' skull-shaped silver watch:

Not long before Mary Queen of Scots had her own head chopped off, she had this bone chilling silver skull watch made. The case is opened by dropping the under jaw, which turns upon a hinge, while the watchworks occupy the place of the brain.

Link

J Robert Lennon has composed a passable short story using only words found in Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat:

My mother was gone. It was a bump on her head, a big bump. I did not know; mother did not tell me. When she did, I fell. "No," I said. "No, not you! Do not go!" But there was no way. She sank fast, that was good. I let her go.

Then one day I saw Sally. We went out for fish. I had cat fish; Sally had something funny, with a big tail.

"What is that thing?" I said.

"This?" A bite. "Fish!"

"Good?"

A shake of the head. "No."

Link (via Kottke)

See also:
Cat in the Hat meets Sputnik
Dr Seuss/Bob Dylan mashup: Dylan Hears a Who

Here's a collection of rare early Bill "Calvin and Hobbes" Watterson's toons from The Kenyon Collegian, his college paper from Kenyon, Ohio. They're a little edgier than the Calvin and Hobbes strips (but not as funny). Link (Thanks, Pat!)

See also:
Real-snow versions of Calvin and Hobbes's gory snowmen
Interview with Bill "Calvin and Hobbes" Watterson's mom
Will there be a Calvin and Hobbes movie?
Calvin and Hobbes slipcased complete collection coming
Bill Watterson reviews the new Charles Schulz bio

Jase sez, "I was doing a promo shoot for a friend's band. Their practice space was on the top floor of this old building, but they'd seen this old, disused bank vault in the basement. From now on, every time I picture intricate steampunk metalworking, I'll picture the inside of that vault door." Link (Thanks, Jase!)

Museum of Hoaxes found this video that purports to show an audio speaker that pulls objects towards it.

Obviously it's fake. Audio speakers will not create a gravity field. But I'm not sure how they created the special effect. (Not that I know much about creating video effects.)

Perhaps they used some kind of fancy editing software. Or perhaps they did it a really low-tech way -- moving the objects one frame at a time to make it appear as if they were sliding towards the speaker. If they did it the latter way, they managed to make the sliding effect look very smooth.

How do you think it was done? Link

Here is a video of Wouter Bijdendijk, a Dutch magician who performs as Ramana, levitating outside the White House. He has, er, risen to the occasion in many famous locales, including Times Square.
Link to White House levitation, Link to NYC another levitation on YouTube, Link to Ramana's site (via Cabinet of Wonders)