Due to a recent scuffle over sacred sugar free cookies, science blogger PZ Myers has received a ton of hate mail and calls for his job. Of course, no one surrenders the freedom of speech when they become an employee of the government. You just don’t get to claim that the government institution that you work for supports your statements. Nevertheless, there’s been a lot of intolerance coming in the name of tolerance.

In addition to all this, several emails PZ has received contained death threats, and he has just posted two of those emails to his blog, including full IP addresses, headers, email addresses, and everything. Apparently, one of them sent this email through their work email, so now we know that they work for 1800flowers.com! Doesn’t look like they will be working there much longer.

I once received a very angry email from someone who didn’t like my ‘PRO GMO’ garden sign, but they did not make any threats against my person. They were using their UC Davis email address, and admitted that they were using work time to email me. After several angry emails calling my sign “piss poor” I said this:

Feel free to stop by my garden anytime you like to chat with me in a friendly manner, as I will be around more frequently starting this week. And should I find anything wrong with my sign, be it missing or vandalized, I’ll be thankful you gave me your work phone number. But if you wish to continue the needless slander, I’ll bid you happy gardening.

His response was more of the same. I ended the conversation by pointing out that as university employees, both of us, we have to adhere to the Principles of Community when interacting with each other. So that was that. The funny thing is, as I look through those old emails, at the exact same time I was having a cordial conversation with Wolfgang Rougle, who also wrote for The Aggie, and this turned into a marvelous discussion column printed in the paper. I think I’ll have to post both of these and compare them, as there’s been some demand for this to become available again.

I find it mildly amusing that people will write such regrettable vitriolic statements, not at all realizing that they are doing this from their work emails. This can really come back to bite people sometimes. In the case of ######@1800flowers.com … I don’t think they’re going to be selling flowers much longer.

As for my own email address, I’d like to remind folks that I reserve the right to publish any email that comes my way. I will generally ask before using anyone’s real name, except when there’s an implied understanding, or in extreme cases like with PZ. There are some website changes coming soon to my site, and I’ll have a message explaining my email policies put up after that happens. But seriously, folks, watch what you put in print and send in anger - The Internet Never Forgets.