Medical mystery explained

Back in October, Trump got an MRI as part of a supposedly routine physical, which was weird. MRIs aren’t routine, they’re usually done in response to specific concerns, and further, Trump didn’t know what was scanned.

Following persistent social media speculation, as well as a November 30, 2025, call from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to release Donald Trump’s MRI results from his October visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (via Twitter), reporters aboard Air Force One pressed the president to clarify the reason for the advanced imaging. Trump said he didn’t know which part of his body was scanned, but insisted, “It wasn’t the brain, because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”

I think that a legitimate part of a cognitive test would be to put the person in a massive clanking, clunking machine on a dolly that shuffles them back and forth and ask them what was scanned. If they don’t know, they failed it. Amazingly, I’ve had two MRIs this past year, once for my head and once for my knee, and I knew exactly what they were for every step of the way.

I am pleased to know what the purpose of the president’s MRI was, finally.

President Trump undergoes MRI of rectum to determine just how many Republicans remain firmly wedged there.

We still don’t know the number, though. I’m sure it was huge, really huge, the biggest crowd ever.

Lessons I probably shouldn’t use in my classes

I subscribe to the Oglaf patreon. I find the comic amusing, and via the patreon, I get extra content, sporadically. Recently, Trudy and Doug posted “A bunch of ideas we had that didn’t quite turn into strips but that we also couldn’t quite let go of,” and there was one that I also found irresistible. It’s mildly scatological and definitely profane, and also biological, so I have to post it here.

Matthew 6:28-29

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

Flowers of the field are shitty with Matthew.

What? We aren’t working because we’re not running a bakery or some shit?

We’re processing carbon dioxide to oxygen and carbohydrates, storing that energy, growing roots and leaves, drawing water and nutrients from the soil, deploying defenses against climate and pests, constantly battling for reproduction and survival.

Fuck you.

Let’s see you attract appropriate pollinators with scent and colour and then tell us we don’t work, you anthrocentric shit.

I post it here because, tragically, I cannot use it in my classes, no matter how appropriate the point is.

Now I know what they do at faculty meetings on the humanities/social sciences side of campus

They’re planning armageddon.

The floating text for this cartoon reads, “Anyone who thinks the humanities makes people more expansive should spend four minutes in an English department meeting.” It’s too true. I would never go over to the other side of my campus for one of their meetings, but here in the sciences building we have a statistician as chair who bangs through the meeting agenda on a tight schedule and doesn’t permit too much digression. We’re scared of the anarchy in the English department.

I don’t want to try to imagine what’s happening in the Art or Music departments. I’m pretty sure it involves other-worldly horrors and ritualistic chanting.

Biologists aren’t funny

Also, we’re going to nit-pick all your jokes and tell you why this one is stupid.

So you might as well stop trying. In a study, some critics found that biologists are duds at getting a laugh.

Everyone knows that a good joke can liven up a talk. Sadly, however, good jokes are in
short supply — at least according to a survey of more than 500 presentations at biology meetings.

Two-thirds of the attempts at humour during these talks fell flat, drawing either polite chuckles or no laughter at all. Almost one-quarter of attempted jokes were judged as a “moderate success”, eliciting audible laughter from around half the audience. Only 9% prompted most or all of the attendees to laugh enthusiastically. In fairness, 42% of jests were spontaneous remarks relating to glitches in presentations, such as slide malfunctions, that were not intended to bring down the house. And audiences might not have expected jokes, making it harder to get them to laugh.

Roughly 40% of the talks monitored were humourless, eliminating the risk of failed jokes, but probably raising the risk of bored listeners. The work is published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Just biologists? OK, now I want to see some comparative studies. Who’s funnier, biologists, chemists, or physicists? What about mathematicians? Or, dare I say it, philosophers? I want to see some competition here, because my experience has been that biologists are much funnier than all those other disciplines…possibly because I don’t understand what they’re talking about. Possibly because we all know that bodily functions and sex are a much richer playground for jokes.

If you want a real snooze, listen to business people trying to make a speech. There’s usually some kind of tired old joke from a tired old joke book to break the ice, and then a lot of dreary numbers and ‘inspirational’ anecdotes.

They do provide some suggestions for adding humor.

Top tips for making jokes during a conference presentation, according to Victoria Stout, who
works in student support at Sacramento City College and is also a comedy performer.
• Authenticity is key. But if you’re super-sarcastic and mean, that’s not going to be appropriate.
• Use humour to connect with the audience, not to isolate them.
• Scientists respond well to puns. They also like analogies.
• People relax with a joke attempt. That primes the way for successful jokes later.
• Scientists have had incredibly interesting lives, and humour comes from the reality of our lived experience. Therefore, you are funny.

All that is mostly fair. “Scientists respond well to puns” sounds a little bit like an insult. “Scientists have had incredibly interesting lives” sounds like she doesn’t know very many scientists. I spend way too much time peering into dark corners looking for arthropods to be called “interesting,” and all you have to do is ask my wife or kids to learn that I am one of the most boring people on the planet.

It’s a joke, I worry that some will take it seriously

Whoa, don’t diss schools.

I use algebra all the time! Not just in the lab, but in cooking — how do you do unit conversions or scaling of simple quantities without it?

I don’t think King Lear is a manual in how to divide inheritances, and if you think it is, maybe you need to read it again, for comprehension.

Evolution doesn’t suggest that modern fish will turn into modern mammals in real time. Somebody wasn’t paying attention in class.

Dodgeball…I will give her that. We learned nothing from dodgeball, it was the favorite game of the class bullies. Why were we playing dodgeball in school anyway?