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

• We have a nifty new toy (well, it’s new to me at least) here at Heard on the Hill World Headquarters at Seventh and New Hampshire that allows me to not only see how many people are reading my stories but also how they’re getting there.

And, I have to say, it’s kind of fun to see (generally) where you’re all coming from and how you got here.

Recently, I saw a strange spike in readership in an old story of mine that talked about KU’s declining enrollment.

As it turned out, the story was making the rounds on various sports message boards of opposing teams, like Kansas State’s GoPowercat.com, and this post on tigerboard.com.

The post puts up a link to the story and speculates that, perhaps, the declining enrollment is due to a lackluster performance by KU’s football team.

I wonder if anyone’s told the chancellor that — I bet she would be interested to know that her efforts to shift scholarship funds to be used in student recruitment might be better spent in the athletics department on football recruitment.

Or not.

But, at any rate, it’s been fun for me to gain access to all this information and see what kinds of stuff you all like reading about (and what you don’t), and I’ll certainly try to share some nuggets it reveals that I find interesting from time to time.

Now I can tell where comments like the last one on the story, on Nov. 1, came from.

“KU sucks at everything,” the comment read. “Bring back Mangino and your enrollment will go up.”

• KU’s International Student and Scholar Services is seeking volunteer families to participate in the 57th annual Betty Grimwood Thanksgiving Homestay Program for international students.

Families can host one or more international students during KU’s Thanksgiving break — from Tuesday, Nov. 22, to Sunday, Nov. 27 — or can provide a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, Nov. 24.

If this is the sort of thing that might be up your alley, contact ISSS at 864-3617 or send email to isssprograms@ku.edu by Friday, Nov. 11.

• Charles Hoag, professor emeritus of music theory and composition, and a former Kansas Composer of the Year, will have an 80th birthday concert in his honor that will feature his music.

The concert, “Hoag at 80,” is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at Swarthout Recital Hall inside Murphy Hall.

The music will be performed by a variety of vocal and instrumental music faculty, and will feature works including “Cicada Songs,” “Inventions on the Summer Solstice” and “Thoreau’s Flute.”

• I know you’re out there, Heard on the Hill reader from Afghanistan, so go ahead and send me a tip from the desert at ahyland@ljworld.com.