Further to my ode to the joys of Nestle’s Nespresso machine the other day, here is the New York Times obituary of Ernesto Illy of Illycaffè fame. He ran "the Bell Labs of coffee" in Trieste before Starbucks had opened its first store in Seattle.

Further to my admiration for the supermarket in Davos that did not offer me a plastic bag, I note that it is only part of Switzerland’s green credentials.

Yale University’s environmental performance index, which was released at Davos, places Switzerland top of the league on factors including air pollution, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions per head etc. The study notes that wealth correlates closely with environmental performance: the richer you are the more you tend to care about such things.

I got a Nespresso coffee machine for Christmas this year and I have written an FT column about it. You can read it here and post comments below. Happy New Year.

A word of praise for my local coffee shop. It does indeed serve good coffee but another reason I like it is that it offers it in sizes "small, medium or large". Yes, that’s right. Not "tall, grande and venti". Or "large, extra-large and super-size".

My colleague Tim Harford has written elsewhere about how one now has to ask specially for a short cappucino in Starbucks as if is a samizdat item. The menu starts with tall.

More generally, the abolition of the notion that any serving or portion can be small – as if consumers will somehow feel short-changed – is irritating for fans of plain speaking.

I also like the fact that my local frozen yogurt shop calls its main flavour "ordinary". But that is another story.