Can Maya come out to play?

At Montclair State we switched to Maya this semester (from Lightwave) and that meant that I had to update all my lectures and instruction. That did take up most of the time I spent at the computer. But all work and no play make not only Jack a dull boy, so after Thanksgiving, after the Family left, I found an hour or two to play and stumbled across the fact that every single point on a Mesh can be animated individually:

I rendered it using Mental Ray with a shader that is using the distance to the center of the sphere to change appearance a bit. No bones, blend shapes or other deformers, just point animation. Though it may be considered pointless. But that is the point of play, right?