• Paul Selden, a KU distinguished professor of invertebrate paleontology, knows an awful lot about really, really old spiders.

And he’s been getting a lot of publicity lately for his research on the biggest fossilized spider on record, found in the Inner Mongolian region of China.

“Her body is not the biggest, but if you add in her long legs then she’s the largest,” he told BBC News. (There’s a photo there, of the fossil, too, if you dare).

Some of the females of this species, Nephila jurassica, would have had a leg span of nearly six inches across.

Um, I don’t freak out much about spiders, but I think I’d prefer to keep the “six-inchers” back 165 million years ago where they belong.

• I ran into Curtis Marsh, the awesome KU Info director, on campus on Wednesday, and, probably knowing I’m a sucker for the strange questions the KU Info question answering service gets, he told me about a pretty fun one.

Recently, someone called KU Info and asked how much it would cost to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with Jell-O.

And, because inquiring minds need to know, the KU Info staff found out the answer.

One package of Jell-O makes two cups of the stuff. With an Olympic-sized swimming pool being 660,000 gallons, that means we’re looking at 10,560,000 cups of water.

KU Info says the approximate cost of a package of Jell-O is $0.96.

So, you’re going to need just more than $5 million to fill up an Olympic-sized swimming pool with Jell-O. Marsh said that’s one of the many silly questions his folks get, but many of the questions — about 90 percent, he said — are KU-related.

And he suggests trying to get some kind of volume-based discount if you actually give this a whirl.

• Because she’s the awesome kind of person, Cathy M. Dwigans, program associate for the Self Graduate Fellowship, came through with a tip for Heard on the Hill after I asked her to contribute one yesterday.

And probably because she’s a program associate for the Self Graduate Fellowship, she decided that it would be nice if people knew a little more about … the Self Graduate Fellowship.

I had heard about this unique KU program, but Cathy filled in some details that I didn’t know before.

The basic idea, as Cathy describes it, is a fellowship funded by a gift from Madison and Lila Self to support Ph.D. students who promise to make a significant contribution to their field of study and to society.

You’ve got to be studying one of these fields to be eligible: business, economics, engineering, mathematics, biological sciences, biomedical sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, and physical sciences.

The fellowship includes a professional development program that makes it unique and spiffy. The professional development includes trips to Washington, luncheons, speeches and a mentor/fellow dinner.

Today, Cathy says, the fellowship supports 29 students, who are among the more than 130 students who have participated since the program began in 1989.

The total value of the fellowships exceed $164,000.

The Selfs met at KU, and Madison Self earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1943 before going on to found Bee Chemical Co. in Lansing, Ill.

They also established the Self Engineering Leadership Fellows program in 2007.

And no, Cathy said, the Selfs are not related to the KU basketball coach Bill Self.

• Cathy knows how much fun it is to send tips to Heard on the Hill. All you have to do is send me an email at ahyland@ljworld.com.