The Stone Age is not over Whether nestled in a dark corner of the gall bladder or hurtling toward us at fearsome speeds from the Kuyper Belt, whether yielding to the sculptor's delicate chisel or used to decorate the human body, stones continue be an integral part of sociopolitical economies. "Cabinet" 53, with a special section on "Stones," features an interview with Robert Proctor on the establishment in the nineteenth century of the now-familiar scale used to value gemstones and the rise of the once-lowly diamond; Brooke Holmes on stones in love; Hugh Raffles on the history of the London Stone; and Richard Klein on the anthropomorphic erratics of Fairfield County, Conneticut. Elsewhere in the issue, Steve Rowell's annotated map of Washington, DC's influential think tanks, political action committees and lobbying groups; Jude Stewart on the color crimson; and Katherine Hunt on the influence that "change-ringing," a complex mode of church bell ringing devised in England, had on seventeenth-century mathematics and linguistics.

The seclusion of islands has long made them ideal screens for our fantasies and terrors, choice locations for military and scientific assays, and perfect settings for escapes, incarcerations and battles for survival. In consideration of these dynamics, "Cabinet" 38 features Julia Wolcott discussing islands in science fiction; Jeffrey Kastner on being marooned; Janet Connelly on West Berlin as an island; Simon Rezak on island penal colonies; the story of the "Chinese Princess" Der Ling, a onetime student of Isadora Duncan who set up court on a Mexican island in the 1920s; and an artist project by Jeremy Drummond. Off-the-island treasures include Anthony Grafton on the Last Supper's culinary legacy; Aaron Schuster on cinematic sneezes; Jonathan Hardy on the Spanish urban grid; Maggie Nelson on the color red; George Pendle on the first computer dating system; Allen S. Weiss on Japanese garden design; and an artist project by Alejandro Cesarco.

Featuring an interview with Sina Najafi, an essay by Martin Herbert, and designed by Dominique Clausen, this is the first major monograph on the British-born, New Yorkbased artist Oliver Clegg. An eclectic, polyphonic and multidisciplinary artist, Clegg's oeuvre stretches from painting, drawing and printmaking to sculpture, installation, site-specific art, participatory projects and beyond. Indeed, his practice is in many ways a shining example of 'post-medium' creativity today, pursuing the essence of art itself beyond any specific medium or artform. The irony is, he's pretty damn good with each artform too. With his erudite, surprising and striking repertoire, and his diverse materials and methods (from glass, wood and steel to neon, resin and concrete, weaving and casting to engraving and industrial manufacture), Clegg offers the viewer a complex, sometimes playful, other times moving journey into existential and ontological notions of objecthood and matter, images and signs, language and communication, creation and being. From the studio and gallery walls to the streets of London and New York, from Freud's house to the Joshua Tree National Park, from foosball tables to state asylums, Clegg turns up to do remarkable things with the fabric of spacetime. And yes, it's an emotional rollercoaster of a ride - in fact, Clegg's oeuvre spans a significant proportion of the spectrum of human emotion, his unique trans-Atlantic blend of humour, sarcasm and wit coming face to face with the much more serious matters of memory, psychology, truth, belief, meaning, love, life and death. Nostalgia, childhood, games, play and sentimentality career headlong into the realms of kitsch, Pop and the history of the avantgarde, resulting in a delightful yet challenging range of responses from the viewer, whether amusement, camaraderie, joy, bemusement, outrage, disillusionment or a call to arms. Clegg is an artist with great energy, incredible spirit, and one of the most engaging, curious, cryptic and entertaining oeuvres currently making waves in the world of art. In many ways an exploration of the id, ego and superego, Clegg's practice plays out the struggle between our basic desires, our rational minds, and the underlying mores that keep us in check. Not unlike Freudian notions of the psyche, Clegg's practice articulates the battle that takes place inside us all on a daily basis, spilling into the outside world in myriad ways. It is a fight, yes, but it is play too.

Dust is everywhere, a perennial presence in the corners of culture. Dust can be deathly (domestic dust is mostly desiccated human skin), deadly (poisonous dust is the product of industry and war) or beautiful (the dusty matte surface of make-up, a light dusting applied by the confectioner, glittering motes caught in a sunbeam). In British English, "dust" is another name for dirt, or matter in the wrong place, implying that it can be moved from one spot to another, but never--as with matter or metaphor--completely eradicated. "Cabinet" 35 examines dust's ubiquity. Features include Steven Connor on the manifold forms and patterns of magic dust; Brian Dillon on Proust's vacuum cleaner; and Valerie Smith and Matt Mullican on marble dust drawings. Elsewhere in the issue, Steve Reinke catalogues untimely deaths; Helen Polson muses over the fate of lost teeth; Jeff Dolven reviews Conlon Nancarrow's compositions for musical machines; and Margaret Wertheim takes on the mathematical structure known as E8.