Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• I’ve been told to expect to see a 50-foot national debt clock on the lawn of Watson Library starting this afternoon.

So that will probably be an interesting sight.

The group Young Americans for Liberty will be erecting the clock in an effort to get the attention of congresspeople from our area. The debt, in case you’re counting, is around $14 trillion.

More than 75 college campuses across the country are participating in the project.

Here’s a whole bunch more information on the topic, including a how-to video that will show you how to create your own 50-foot clock.

I bet that would go over well with the neighbors.

The site also has a list of other participating universities, photos that show you what we’re talking about here and a bunch of other statistics about the national debt.

• Also going on today is The Big Event.

That’s the event where KU students perform odd jobs for members of the Lawrence community as a way to say, Thanks for putting up with us.

I talked with event organizers earlier this week, and they had about 400 students signed up. Though that was short of their initial goal (and they were still registering people at that time), they were still pleased with the results, especially for a first go at what they hope becomes an annual event.

A few obstacles hampered them. Not the least of which is that many students couldn’t work around their class schedules to set aside large blocks of time for volunteer work.

Still, I offer kudos to the hundreds of students who will be out and about doing good work today. I’ll be out there, too, chatting with some of the students, and hopefully getting some video you can see later.

• I was talking to a fine group of folks from KU’s excellent public administration department who had just eaten lunch in the Impromptu Café in the Kansas Union yesterday.

A couple of them mentioned they were big Heard on the Hill fans, which is always nice to hear. Some asked if they could get mentioned specifically.

Sadly, I had to tell Diana Koslowsky, office manager for the department of public administration, that I’m afraid we don’t just name-drop people willy-nilly over here.

Anyway, the point of all this for everyone else is, one person asked if there is a specific RSS feed that just has Heard on the Hill, Town Talk and First Bell posts.

My response, “Of course!” All those have their own sites and accompanying RSS feeds that you can plug into your various RSS readers that provide updates whenever we post something new. I depend on RSS feeds for a lot of great info.

So if you want to be among the first to know when Heard on the Hill gets updated, just head over here, to this site, which has a convenient RSS feed associated with it.

A feed for Chad Lawhorn’s extremely popular Town Talk can be found here, and a similar one for Mark Fagan’s always magnificent First Bell can be found here.

• Heard on the Hill is always a Big Event. But I depend on the magnificent tipsters out there to make it that way. Help me out at ahyland@ljworld.com.