Tyrone Hayes’ Full Email: “Now, you’re just “Trick”…
From: tyrone hayes [thereisonlyonetyrone@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 4:48 PM
To: [email redacted] USGR
Cc: atrazinelovers@yahoo.com
Subject: run tell that!
Attachments: 1524636977-madmanmanifesto.pdf
the response i promised Nov 15, is attached. i suggest you read it in the attached as the formatting communicates as well. you can forward to anyone you like.
tyrone, PhD, ABM, DWC, XXL
I OWN THIS: A MADMAN’S MANIFESTO
Dear Trick,
As promised, I am responding to your email of Thursday, Nov 15, 2007. I am sorry for the delay, but travel, deadlines, the holidays, and several film crews in my lab over the last couple of weeks have kept me busy.
Communications
When I communicate, I communicate fully. There is meaning in every aspect of the communication…What time did I send the message? From what email account was it sent? Was there something significant about the date? Were there quotes, rhymes, strings of numbers? Did I use capital letters consistently? Were there written messages within the messages? etc… In turn, I view all of my incoming messages the same way…there is more to the communication than just the words…so, before I respond to your message directly, “You lost and everyone at SETAC was calling you an entertaining fraud” ([name redacted]), a few things to consider.
The crazy conundrum
I remember as I child, my father would watch me…hours memorizing the Latin names of all the beetles in South Carolina, organizing the heads from my decapitated PEZ dispenser collection, counting the cars on the trains that passed by my house and trying to develop an algorithm for predicting the number and frequency of freight cars, trying to cross species of grasshoppers, constructing genealogies and time lines of people in the Bible and cross-referencing the lineages with those from the Koran, raising thousands of tadpoles on the front porch under different temperature regimes to examine developmental rates and sex ratios…he would shake his head and say, “There’s a fine line between a genius and a fool”.
It does not matter what side of the line I walk, but rather how far over I have crossed. As I once told [name redacted]-with-a-Y-like-the-wine, I accept the fact that I am crazy…proud of it even. But consider that crazy people think that they are normal and that everyone else is crazy. Again, I figure to maintain my sanity, it is best to acknowledge my insanity…but what kind of insane man is sane enough to recognize his own insanity? And if crazy people think they’re sane and that everybody else is crazy, but I acknowledge that I am crazy, does that make me sane and you crazy?…boy, there is a fine line …and consider this…would you rather get your *ss whooped (and you ARE getting your *ss whooped) by a fool or a genius?
The first thing to consider
Before I even open an email such as yours, I consider why you might be sending me an email at all. You see, at the time, it had been 1,778 days since you communicated anything to me (do you remember what you said?). This recent email was intriguing. I know for a fact you have all been warned about communicating anything to me…rumors that I record phone and personal conversations, that I have access to emails and conference calls…rumors that I have contacts inside the company…even rumors that I have planted listening devices on some of you at meetings that have made it back to your office and homes…Not to worry, many crazy people are paranoid…I always say, the secret to a happy successful life of paranoia, is to keep careful track of your persecutors. Why do you think I know exactly what is on page 33 of 490 and pages 46-490 of Syngenta study T001508-03… how else would I know exactly what day the crayfish died in Steeger’s son’s classroom… on May 14, 2002, [name redacted], were your ribs really broken or just bruised? …and [name redacted]-the-Tool, what was the name you used when you talked about me to [name redacted]-with-a-Y-like-the-wine on Dec 13, 2005, 2:12 EST…and what was that comment you made to SWAYLTW on March 15….something about slam-dunking a basketball?…and did Steeger really cancel his cable service… or was he just being obnoxious?
As I was saying, before even opening the email, I wondered, “why would you contact me, after you had been warned?” My first thought was that you were defecting…tired of wondering if you are doing the right thing…all those conversations after work…with your family… about my emails and the work that’s coming out…but surely if you were defecting…you would not use the company email. My second thought was maybe you thought you caught me…that little slip-up that you’ve all been waiting for that will make me liable, make a bad headline…but I’m confident I didn’t slip…what could be so important that you would break 1778 days of silence?
The time
Then I looked at the time the email was sent. Was it a late night email?…that usually means its one of those emotional ones that you should have let sit…maybe one that slipped by after a second glass of scotch. Nope, 14:46:12, middle of the day. That means you thought it was important. Emotional…out of anger…nope, you thought it was clever. You not only left on all recipients, but you added Steeger. That means you either thought your message had relevance to the review, or you just thought your “little buddy” would enjoy it. It also indicated that likely you were with him or had spent some time discussing my presentation the evening before…which I already knew anyway.
The message
And then, after all that thought, I read the message. “You lost, and everyone at SETAC was calling you an entertaining fraud.” I am flattered. You tried to know me. You thought long and hard. You wanted to hurt. You thought… “what words will hurt him the most, what will really get to him?”… “Lost”…my pride for my prowess and intellect was your target. “entertaining fraud” …surely words that will wound a man whose very soul stands on respect and integrity.
Sorry, Trick…My name is tyrone…and you still don’t know.
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
“I’m not touching you”
Imagine…a five year old…holding his finger just millimeters away from an older sibling’s face, “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.” He whispers over and over again, until finally, the target of his taunting gives in… screaming at the top of lungs. On the most base level, that’s the game we play. “I’m not touching you…”….over and over again…until you give…and after 1778 days!…bonus points! Regardless of the content of your email, just by responding, YOU lose. “I’m not touching you…I’m not touching youuuuu.”
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
Everyone at SETAC was calling you an entertaining fraud
“I walk up in there like I’m a resident
Spend some time, bust my rhyme,
Even in-sult your president.” (tyrone)
IDGAF! Come on?????…do you think I care about propriety and professionalism? I do what I do, because it’s what I do…IDGAF!!! look, my first SETAC, I rolled up 15 and 15!… autograph- signing, room-packing, rhyme-busting, *ss-whoopin… and toldem’ “please don’t ever invite me back”…I have used the “F- word” in my talks, have quoted DMX, Busta Rhymes, Tyra Banks, Marvin Gaye…I have jumped off stage, brandished emails…entitled my talks everything from “Opening up shop” (from DMX’s “Stop, drop, shuttem’ down, open up shop”) and “America’s Next Top Model”….I pack the room, havem’ call out security, was the stimulus for the “Hayes clause” at registration, and have been invited back every year. That’s my house, Trick! Do I care what you, Steeger, and your *ss kissin’ H*’s think?
I’ve already been invited to the next one…guess people like being entertained.
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
There is no denying this…
“hip hop don’t stop, and they couldn’t wait
For the sh*t I’m goin drop, in two thousand and eight” (tyrone)
The big news this year will be [name redacted] (Xenopus laevis) and his atrazine-treated brothers and sisters…. brothers with severely impaired fertility and sisters (genetic males) who lay eggs. The reporters have already gotten their piece, waiting for embargoes to drop. I just reviewed another frog paper and saw a preview of a paper showing complete sex reversal in fish with 2.1 ppb atrazine and microarrays showing upregulation of aromatase, p450scc, and StAR in scores of human endocrine cells…in case you don’t know, Trick, that’s bad news…the authors are linking atrazine to infertility, sexual abnormalities, immune impairment and implantation loss and abortion in humans. Once again, the ONLY people who find no effect of atrazine are those under Syngenta’s pay roll…and nothing you have done can touch the quality of my work. Even [name redacted]-the-tool has said “tyrone, that work is crap and you know it” referring to the Syngenta funded work…John Ashby said something similar in England (speaking of crazy people, how’s he doing?)…and if these rumors are true, I would even have a digital recording of these statements. Nothing you have done has discredited my work and nothing you have done has received the attention that my work has. Me lose? I don’t think so… (see “There is no Denying this”, First letter of the first word, of the first sentence, of the first seven paragraphs). My work will stand the test of time…My publications, my funding, the fact that I give more than 60 invited talks per year all over the world…everything from Mayo Clinic, to United Steelworkers to History departments, to women’s health conferences, to Gordon conference on the mammary gland are all testimony to that!
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
Honor thy father and thy mother
My father used to tell me as a child, “work hard in school so that you never have to answer to another man. Never put yourself in a position where another man tells you when to get up in the morning, when to eat your lunch, and when to go home to your family.”
And my boss??? There are only three people in this world who can tell me what to do. One of them died Christmas day 2005. When I asked the other two… “mama, daddy, what should I do?”….they replied, “son…whoop that *ss!…WHOOP that *ss!!! Whoop that *ss ‘til you’re tired of it!”
Who is your boss, [name redacted]? Who’s your daddy?
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
I brought the hood to Harvard
My father used to say, “I just pray to G*d that none of my boys ever go to prison and that at least one of my boys graduates high school.”
I have never seen the inside of a prison. I graduated high school in 1985. I was then accepted on full scholarship to Harvard (pronounced Hah-vahd)…considered the top university in the world. In my major, I finished summa cum laude. I then completed a doctorate in what is considered the second best university in biology in the world (Berkeley) in 3.5 years. I was then hired, and by age 30 became the youngest tenured professor in biology and by age 35 the youngest full professor…ever… in the history of the university. I honored my father (who never finished high school, whose father never went to high school). No matter what the outcome of our relationship and interaction, you will never be able to take that away from him…or me.
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
“I believe the children are the future”
My father used to say, “the son should always be BETTER than the father.”
My father never had a father, but nevertheless, he had the insight and the drive to want and make a better life for me than what he had. I would never say that I am better than my father, but I know what he meant.
My children have attended the fancy “white private schools” that were not available to me. My son, now turning 15, is a lineman on the football team, plays two instruments on the high school marching band, jazz band, orchestra and the Berkeley Youth Orchestra, is a straight A student in the advanced honors program and still holds the district middle school record in shot put. My daughter, now 12, is also a straight A student, plays drums, piano, is the regional gymnastics champion and ranks in the state. As both are beautiful children, they are also quite popular…well-rounded. With their records and along with Harvard and Berkeley alums as parents, they will have their choice of colleges. While college campus was a completely foreign environment to me, they have grown up there…whereas my first flight ever was when I left South Carolina for Harvard, by age two my son had traveled in Japan, Thailand, China, Mexico, and both have traveled to Belize, Paris, London, Italy, Tunisia…I wouldn’t say that my children are better than me… that would be an insult to my father… but you know what I mean.
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
Large and in charge
When I went to college, my father reported an annual income of $9,000 for a family of five. I get paid $10,000 for talking for an hour…$20,000 + expenses for walking around barefoot in Borneo…I look out of my west facing window from my 1.4 million dollar home…over my grapes, fruit trees… out over Oakland, Alameda, across the bay to San Francisco… I think about that big six bedroom, three bath, two-story “white-folk” house that I bought my parents, while eating lobster and caviar in my $150K newly renovated kitchen, sitting at my 12 person Chippendale table… and I think… “even if they could take it all away, I would lose nothing”… I will “leave this world the same way I came into it…with nothing.”
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
Thuglife was the reason for this
“Thuglife”…not the crap you read in the dictionary…is a philosophy defined by Tupac Shakur as a life where someone from nowhere makes something of themselves from nothing…makes something of themselves that he/she can be proud of, and always remembers where he/she came from. Thus, even a drug dealing gangbanger or pimp who remembers where he came from…follows the code and doesn’t exploit his own hood, doesn’t run kids, doesn’t sell to kids, or pimp from his own hood… is better than a doctor who moves out and never gives back.
Me?…I am nobody from nowhere…I took the hood to Harvard and brought Harvard back to the hood…do you know what the little ones say about me when I go back for Christmas… “We saw you on tv! We learned about you in school! You are in our textbook! We got your Starbuck’s cup! Can I be a scientist too!” What you know ‘bout that, Trick? You don’t know…
Do you know how many of the students in my lab were from ’round the way?…(homeless, drug dealers, on drugs, single parents, family members of gangbangers, etc)…but found there way to me and have now graduated…gone on to grad school and med school? (you know at least two of them)? Do you know about that, Trick?…And in March, I will carry the ivory tower straight back to the hood…in the same way that ‘pac brought the east coast-west coast to the end…laid down the law (“Cleveland to LA”)… thuglove, N*GG*!!! (yeh you, Trick!)… thuglife.
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
Stewards of the earth
“Accurate knowledge of Chr*st, the F*th*r will bring the everlasting, now” (TAPKAP).
Does not matter if I reject theism, subscribe to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism… they all saw the way…I denied the comfort of a Syngenta contract (remember [name redacted]…you and [name redacted]?) and risked the wrath of Ecorisk, Syngenta, even some people at my University…risked my reputation, my name…some say even my life, for what I thought (and now know) was right…as [name redacted]told me “you know you’re holding all the cards”…I could have gotten whatever I wanted out of Syngenta…I chose to say no…I chose integrity…and I won… Even if you could destroy me now, I would go down a martyr for the environment…my granddaughter’s daughter will honor me as I honor my grandmother…can you be so sure, [name redacted]?…our conversations in the past and your continued discussions at home…the look on your face in Milwaukee… indicate that you are not so sure…I have never doubted my position. And for me…this is heaven. I tell my children, “do not do the right thing because you seek reward, and do not avoid the wrong thing because you fear punishment, but rather, do the right thing because it is the right thing.” I did the right thing. My granddaughter’s granddaughter will tell yours so…Trick!
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
The name of the game…is persistence
“Despite the roadblocks and obstacles that I may face, I know that I will never fail…because to truly fail, one has to give up, and that is something that I will never do.”
(tyrone, October 13, 1988, last line of personal statement from a successful graduate application to UC Berkeley).
I remember, like yesterday, playing kickball in my yard. The little kids (I was 9 at the time), played the big kids. We were losing, but not too badly, when most of my team decided it was getting late and they had to go home. Eventually, my whole team quit except me. I insisted we continue and managed to get the last out. At home plate, I managed to kick a homerun, but then on my second kick, got only to 2nd base. With no one to kick me home, I could only move off base and get tagged out to return to home. The older kids on the other team decided it was pointless and they too quit. I insisted that they stay eventually resorting to “if you forfeit, then you lose!” You might think that the result was they would never want to play with me again…just the opposite…but only if I would play on their team!
“I own this”, Trick. I can stop anytime I want to, for whatever reason. I am a tenured full professor with a lifetime endowment at one of the top two biology departments in the world. I don’t HAVE to do anything. If I quit I still have my position, my salary, my endowment and my freedom to do whatever I want. If you quit, however, you will leave the world to face the truth. You can’t quit! How much money do you spend campaigning against me, driving bogus science to buck me…how many conference calls, emails, meetings, how many? Because you have to…me…because I choose to…because I own this.
And maybe this is just fun for me… maybe it’s just a game. Maybe I just love the attention. Maybe your best defense is to ignore me and I will get bored and find somebody else to play with. Somebody else to annoy. But you can’t quit can you? Even though every time you acknowledge me, you bring the hype that brings a standing room only crowd. Maybe, the day before each talk and in the preceding hours, I tell stories of how Syngenta follows me around, taking notes and sending me threatening sounding messages, contacting my university, trying to get the names of people who review my papers (yeh, I saw the emails, Trick!)…maybe half the people I meet with are intrigued, the other half thinking… “man this brother really is crazy!” And then…I give my talk…and in the back, there is a man in a suit that nobody recognizes…taking notes like crazy, sometimes (like in Australia), he even introduces himself…legitimizing all the crazy paranoid stories that built up over the day…boy that really livens things up!
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
These tricks ain’t for kids
And of course, I put everything into a cultural context…I bring you to my world. Who is [name redacted]? Are you Pimpin’? Again, not the crap you read in the dictionary… “Pimp” is boss…ballin’, runnin’ the hood. Under him are the H*’s (slang for wh*r*s)…in the strictest sense those selling their bodies…but generally anyone selling themselves, selling out. Though a derogatory term, at least H*’s have some command…they have something that somebody wants, that somebody will pay for. Then there are the “scrubs”…pimp wannabes riding on the pimp’s coat-tails…hoping to boss one day. At the bottom, there are the “tricks”…customer of the H*’s… nobodies (no real man has to pay for it )… ultimately supporting the pimps…even the scrubs have ambition and a path.
When we met, you were a scrub…remember you and peter? (I still have the emails and if the rumors are true…transcript of our conversation)…but you ain’t even scrub now…just a trick…a nobody… no path…counting on your (in this case…dumb) H*s, watching them present their purchased science… I saw it in your aging desperate face in Milwaukee…that’s why you cc’d [name redacted]-the-tool on your email…you wanted to impress the pimp, “trick-daddy”…that’s why you added eager-steeger….that’s what I saw in your face. Way back then, at least you were scrub, trying to do what’s right…trying to maintain your job…trying to scrub. Now, you’re just “Trick”…paying your H*’s hoping to keep your pimp happy.
And me?…I guess back then I was the equivalent of an academic scrub, trying to make tenure, trying to boss. I guess I temporarily was even a H*, trying to get paid, trying to satisfy…”He will come running” ([name redacted]to [name redacted])… “How high?” right? But now? Trick, who’s ballin’, baby!
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
It’s like foreplay
And finally…maybe it is nothing more than a simple game to me. Again…maybe, I just love the attention. Maybe you are stroking my ego even in your non-response…and maybe the silence is like foreplay…1778 days of foreplay…where in my confidence, I know that eventually…you will come…come to me.
1778 days you were gone….
Kahlil Gibran said, “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours…”
1778 days…and you have returned…. Are you mine, [name redacted]?
“I own this”…and I own you.
“You lost” ([name redacted])
“Exactly what did I lose?” (tyrone)
Read more about Dr. Hayes’ Abusive Email Messages.
Category: Tyrone Hayes
