Jack Shafer’s Health Club Habits

Noted: Slate‘s Jack Shafer can kinda creep us out sometimes. Buried in a review of the Times‘ new TimesDigest, we learned more than we ever wanted to know about Shafer’s whirlpool routine:

I originally encountered the 8-and-1/2 by 11 publication last year in the whirlpool room of a Michigan health club. At first sight, I mistook the photocopied, stapled, and soggy thing drooping on the towel rack for a New York Times novelty wash cloth, and my instinct was to either trashcan it or use it to lather up a bar of soap. But as a devoted reader of everything from cereal boxes to the Yellow Pages, I gave TimesDigest a chance, and I’m glad I did. The shorter New York Times, set in the same fonts as the newspaper, is the perfect brief news read, provided you’re 1) not near a computer and can’t download the Times Reader; 2) unable to get the regular Times; 3) extraordinarily pressed for time; or 4) in a mood to make only one hand available for reading (such as when you’re in the whirlpool).

But, hey. That obituary he wrote of Walter Annenberg was awesome.

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