High Point University (just south of Greensboro, N.C.) is not quite Club Med ("Club Ed," it was called by the Chronicle of Higher Education) but provides free ice cream for students, a hot tub in the middle of campus, wake-up calls and a concierge service, all run by a campus "director of WOW," whose job it is to thrill the "clients" and attract new ones. This is the strategy of President Nido Qubein, a motivational speaker and "customer comes first" businessman, and so far, enrollment is way up (even at higher tuition), new construction is transforming the campus and $100 million is in the bank.

Leading economic indicators(1) Britain's Sea Life Centre announced a study in July that would give octopuses Rubik's Cubes to play with, to ascertain whether they use a certain tentacle for such activities, or any tentacle at random. (2) Writing in the journal Nature in July, a team of University of Oregon biologists showed that roundworms do "calculus"-type computations, using chemosensory neurons, to determine how to find food or avoid trouble. (2) In Crawley, England, in July, police were called to a supermarket to break up a fight between two grandmothers, who were ramming each other in their mobility scooters.

The U.S. government's $100 billion stimulus distributed to taxpayers this spring achieved mixed results, according to economists, but at least the Internet pornography industry flourished (according to a July trade association spokesman).

Adult Internet Market Research Co. reported that "20 to 30 percent" of "adult" Web sites reported that sales rose during the time checks were being issued. However, Nevada brothels were suffering, even though Hof's Bunny Ranch ran a stimulus-check special: Hand over your $600 check and get the usual $1,200 "party" ("three girls and a bottle of champagne").

Frontiers of Science

-- A 10-year-old British boy had such a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder that he was overwrought with guilt that he had caused the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, in that he had not been able that day to make his ritual step upon a particular mark in the street. Writing in June in the journal Neurocase, psychologists at University College London said the boy recovered only when they convinced him that the attacks had already started by the time he would have made his usual step.

-- Many nations are exploring how to curb cattle's release of the greenhouse gas methane, including altering cows' diets to reduce flatulence (which requires monitoring the gas compositions from the old and new diets). To collect the gas for measurement (according to a July report in London's Daily Telegraph), researchers at Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology rigged a large plastic tank to the cow's back, with a tube to the backside to directly capture each emission. (The alternative, researchers pointed out, would require a human to follow a cow around with plastic bags.)

Higher-Order Animal Research

Update

News that sounds like a joke(1) After complaints by neighbors, police went to an apartment in Framingham, Mass., in July to quell a raucous screaming match between two women who, it turns out, are deaf.