Reading the last couple of issues of FERMINEWS has moved me to write and congratulate you on the new look of the magazine. It is even more reader-friendly, particularly for those lay readers outside the technical community who find it an essential guide to your work. Not only that, but I continue to be impressed by the way in which you elevate everyday life at Fermilab into interesting features that give a real sense of community.

As possible ideas that could be the kernel of a future inspiration, I am always intrigued by the menus in your restaurant! I say this because the BBC office here at Millbank, in London, where we produce the political news out of the Westminster government across the road, has no staff canteen. We DO have a young lady who brings sandwiches around in a plastic box twice a day, so we can eat at our desks.There is a limit to the appeal of this. Anything, therefore, that looks like the promise of exotic food, albeit across the Atlantic, takes on a special meaning.

I am also a keen photographer (LRPS, Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society), so I am interested in the illustrations. Some of the published portraits are excellent, and I am always pleased when you are able to let your photographers free to exploit the obvious artistic potential of hi-tech machinery. More please, and perhaps profiles of your photographic team?

Finally, I was also amused and impressed by the seasonal page I found on the Net, "Santa at Nearly the Speed of Light." After reading it I was left wondering whether, in light of the recent news about kaon-antikaon transformation and the question mark raised over the "reversibility" of time, Santa’s presents, once past, could become presents again. And did Charles Dickens know more than he admitted with the concept of Christmas Past, Present and Future in "A Christmas Carol"? Might the violation of time symmetry by kaons be renamed "The Scrooge Effect"??

Chris RogersBBC South West Political Editor Millbank, London, & Plymouth, England