Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was driving around doing some errands last night. At one point during his travels, he heard a commerical on the radio for Amtrak. It was followed by a commerical for Southwest Airlines. These two commericals spawned an interesting train of thought…

That train of thought transported your Maximum Leader back to high school. When your Maximum Leader was in high school, some students were allowed to play music over the public announcement system in the morning during the time from when the first buses arrived at the building to a few minutes before the school day was to begin. This was our school “radio station.” From time to time one of the “DJs” would interrupt the music to read from his large collection of printed airline and train schedules. (Yes, this guy apparently had a hobby collecting train and airline schedules.) He’d tell you that there was a flight on Delta from Rochester NY to Atlanta GA at 8:28am - or some other such useless (yet superficially interesting) flight/train information.

So your Maximum Leader wonders… Do airline companies still print those little books with all their flight schedules? In this age of wireless access of just about anything through one’s laptop, phone, or PDA, it seems as though printing a booklet would be a waste of money… But not printing one would make collectors of such relics rather sad.

And in case you were wondering… Your Maximum Leader is not the “guy” in this story. He’s never collected airline or train schedules.

Carry on.