St Patrick's Day in early lead for my most celebrated holiday of 2013

We went to the New Haven parade -- all 2 solid hours of it -- two Sundays ago and marched in the NYC parade last Saturday in the Quinnipiac delegation. I have to say, it was a thrill to march up an empty 5th Avenue for 25 blocks while the drunken masses cheered. I was a little concerned they might jeer us for being, how shall I put this, a low effort group -- no music, dance or  parade-relevant displays except for -- come again? -- blue sashes. Luckily, we were right behind a solid marching band that got a lot of people fired up with its rousing version of "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" by the Drop-Kick Murphys (down side: over the 25 blocks I heard them play it roughly 36 times). Favorite signs of the day: 2 parade watchers were each holding up matching neon green signs, one that read "YO, BRIAN!" and another "YO, KATHLEEN!"

Never thought of it that way ...

There's a new medical school starting up in Connecticut. I just heard an ad on NPR from it requesting body donations for the new students' Gross Anatomy lab. Let's for a minute take the viewpoint that this ad was a good idea: attentive audience of generally older people who are well-educated and probably lean towards philanthropy. The counter argument might be: hey, since this is quite likely the first time most listeners have heard of you, maybe establish yourself a bit before you go to the airwaves asking for people's corpses?

Just as I was having this debate in my head, the ad closed with "A great way to save on funeral costs."

How will they study the effectiveness of this ad? I'm guessing a form when you walk in:

How did you decide to donate your body to us? Check all that apply:

• Heard ad on radio
• Not feeling well, looking for final resting place
• Have always wanted to do this and saw building go up recently, thought I'd stop in
• Other: