Wind Farm Oil Leaks -- April 7, 2016

Oil Spills On Wind Farms -- Tell Me It Isn't So! From Michigan's Thumb:

Ominous black spots on wind turbines in the Thumb have raised a few eyebrows.

Huron County Building and Zoning Director Jeff Smith says residents have questioned what look like grease stains on six or seven turbines between Sebewaing and Owendale.

“It was disturbing to see that,” Smith said, adding he drove through the area Monday.

Seals on the turbine were coming out of bearing holders, Smith said, comparing it to a vehicle with a bad wheel bearing. He said he’s not sure if the bearings on the turbines are faulty or defective.

“GE knew but did not tell us,” Smith said of turbine manufacturer General Electric, adding he got an email from NextEra Energy stating a cleaning crew is coming.

There are 32 turbines in Exelon Wind Generation’s Harvest 1 project in Oliver and Chandler townships. A 400-foot, 485,000-pound turbine that fell on Feb. 25 spilled 25 gallons of greases, oil and coolant, according to the DEQ. The spill posed “no imminent drinking water or environmental health threat,” a DEQ official told the Tribune.

Exelon says the fallen turbine held about 400 gallons of oil.

The leaks aren’t limited to just Huron County.

See more at the link. 

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The Starbucks Page

For the record, I am back at Starbucks. Regular readers know that I "gave up" on Starbucks some months ago, saying I would never return, after they announced yet another price increase.

But I'm back.

McDonald's coffee still tastes slightly better and the senior cup is only 50 cents vs $2.00 for a "tall" (smallest size) Starbucks coffee.

But I'm back. Lots of reasons. Right now, the biggest reason probably has to do with the location: at 5.0 miles to the one in Southlake, and 5.5 miles to the one in Grapevine, their locations are the perfect distance for a bike ride. I could find a McDonald's about the same distance away, but the ambience at a Starbucks is still better.

I was reminded of that when a couple of articles on Starbucks were posted over the last few days.

First, from Financial Times:

Most Tuesday afternoons, in the lazy late hour between the end of school and the start of Brownies, you can find me ensconced in the café of the local Marks and Spencer, sipping a hot chocolate with the younger Miss Harford.

Recently, the café has taken the unusual step of radically simplifying the drinks menu. All the standards are there, of course: tea, cappuccino, hot chocolate. But the size options have been covered over with masking tape. Gone are the “small” and the “large”. Now you can have any size of hot beverage you like, as long as it’s medium.

Perhaps M&S hopes to save money by rationalising the crockery. Or perhaps they simply guess that simplicity is attractive. A few years ago, Debenhams, another British household name with a frumpy image, tried the slogan “Say goodbye to coffee confusion”. Debenhams rebranded cappuccino as “frothy coffee” and caffè latte as “really, really milky coffee”, winning headlines for the most patronising publicity stunt in living memory.

But simplicity can sell. A famous study by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper offered samples of speciality jam to customers of a high-end supermarket. (Loyal readers may recall the column I wrote about this in November 2009.) Offered a choice of six types of jam, a third of customers went on to make a purchase. Offered a choice of 24, almost nobody did. Iyengar and Lepper concluded that choice can overwhelm and discourage us.

Yet it is unclear how widespread this “choice demotivates” effect is. The original Iyengar-Lepper results, like many in psychology, seem to be fragile. Several follow-up studies have failed to find evidence for the effect. (There is no shame in this; that’s science at work.)

Many successful businesses, from supermarkets to Starbucks, offer a vast range without scaring away their customers. A first-time visitor to Starbucks might be confused, but regulars work it out. And clever design can prevent choice seeming overwhelming. Starbucks offers about 100,000 drink combinations — millions, once the syrups are taken into account — but the menu seems much simpler than that.

From Investopedia:

With its Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room in Seattle, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) has created a location that works on multiple levels.

It's partly a retail destination for which consumers may travel much farther than they would for a traditional store. On the top of that, it's also a bit of a museum or temple for coffee and an active production facility that roasts beans for sale throughout the region.

Now, the company has announced plans for a new Roastery in New York City that will open in 2018.

The Roastery locations give consumers a window into where Starbucks coffee comes from. They also position the brand as "elite" and clearly differentiate it from rivals like Dunkin' Donuts. This is coffee as art, coffee-making as theater.

"Our Seattle Roastery experience created something that had never been done before, transforming a retail environment into something far beyond just a coffeeshop and into the single best retail experience of any kind," said CEO Howard Schultz in a press release.

"In New York, we want to take elements from what we originally created and build something even bigger and bolder, celebrating coffee and craft in a completely unique and differentiated way. We want this experience to tell our customers that we're coming to Broadway."

The New York facility, which will be located in "the heart of the Meatpacking District at 61 Ninth Avenue, which is currently under development," according to the company. It will be a 20,000 square-foot store that will "build upon everything Starbucks has learned from integrating coffee roasting, manufacturing, education and retail, while ensuring an experience that is locally relevant to the market."

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Those Who Fail To Study History

JRR Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings in December, 1937. It was very slow going at first. Only as WWII was drawing closer did he move the story along. The story really goes nowhere in the first book, but finally there is a sense of urgency shown in the second chapter of the second book with the Council of Elond.

The Council of Elond was convened to discuss the ominous signs of war, of Sauron.

From JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey, c. 2000:

There is a suggestion by the host, Saruman, “that perhaps the members of the Council might be able to persuade, direct, control Sauron — though he does not say Sauron, he says ‘the Power’.

The idea of anyone, however wise, persuading Sauron, would sound simply silly if it were said in so many words. No sillier, though, than the repeated conviction of many British intellectuals before and after this time that they could somehow get along with Stalin, or with Hitler.” 

I had read that passage before (based on my notes in the margin) but this time I saw something new. One wonders if twenty years from now, or fifty years from now, historians will write the same thing about American intellectuals in the Obama administration who felt “they could somehow get along with the 21st century Iranians”?

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How Deep Is Your Love -- 1977 -- It Seems Like Only Yesterday

How Deep Is Your Love, The Bee Gees