Yesterday (February 9th 2014), the Copenhagen Zoo murdered Marius, a 18-month giraffe baby by shooting him in the head. They then proceeded to dismember his corpse in front of the zoo visitors and feed the corpse to the lions.

Social networks and news sites are all echoing this crime. Just a few examples:

• ABC.es (Spanish newspaper): El zoo de Copenhagen sacrifica a una jirafa sana pese a una intensa campaña online (The Copenhagen zoo kills a healthy giraffe in opposition to a heated online campaign)
• The Independent: Danish zoo to kill ‘surplus’ young giraffe and feed him to the lions
• BBC News Europe: ‘Surplus’ giraffe put down at Copenhagen Zoo
• The Guardian: Copenhagen zoo sparks outrage by killing healthy giraffe named Marius
• TIME: Did Marius the Giraffe Have to Die?
• The Mirror: Zoo bosses who approved killing of  Marius the giraffe should be sacked say campaigners

There was nothing wrong with Marius. He was a completely healthy animal. However, Bengt Holst, Director of Research and Conservation at Copenhagen Zoo, decided that Marius wasn’t genetically valuable enough. Other zoos offered to adopt Marius, but Holst declined the offers and decided that it would be a better show to kill the baby giraffe and carve the corpse in front of the public.

This is a photo of this fucking son of a bitch (it’s the dude on the left, the elephant is innocent):

In my opinion, this bastard, together with all the staff involved in the killing, should be immediately fired, forbidden to ever work with animals again, and put on trial for cruelty against animals. Under his direction, the Copenhagen Zoo sacrifices 20-30 animals per year.

There are several petitions online to get Holst fired or force him to resign. Here are two of them:

• Petition at Change.org for the resignation of Bengt Holst
• Petition at thepetitionsite.com to have him fired

You should sign these, but you know how these things work: online petitions will most likely be ignored. Please share this in all your social networks. It may also be effective to write a letter directly to the Copenhagen Zoo and express your feelings about this killing. Here’s the address:

WARNING: what follows are the photos of the killing and dismembering process. There are lots of blood, so don’t read the rest of the post if you’re sensitive to this stuff.

I’ve been following Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic stripg for many, many years now. I have most of the Dilbert comic strip books, several of Scott’s books (including his just-released How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big) and I’m an early member of the DNRC. Translation: I’m a huge Scott Adams fan.

Usually Scott’s comics are apolitical, but in his February 7th comic strip he takes a very clear stance against homophobia:

Scott, my respect for you has now officially gone through the roof.

On February 4th 2014 there was a debate between Bill Nye (American scientist known for his The Science Guy educational program) and Ken Ham (the creationist behind the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis). The topic was:

Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern, scientific era?

The whole debate is available online here (warning: it’s over two hours long), but this is not what I want to write about this time. During the debate, Matt Stopera from BuzzFeed asked 22 creationists to write a message or question to the other side. Most questions were quite dumb. This one is my favourite:

I thought it would be fun (for me) to reply these questions, so here are my answers (keep reading).

Now that I don’t work for Apple anymore I can post again about fixing issues in OS X and iOS devices. Some other day I’ll write about how much OS X Server sucks (now the Server application), but for now let me tell you about an issue that kept me busy this morning.

One of our work computers in the office has been prompting for the login keychain password every five minutes or so, annoying the user with popups like these:

This started happening after removing the user’s account from the computer without deleting the home folder, and logging in again using his Active Directory account. The old keychain was deleted and a new one created manually.

After checking for a while I realized that the problem is that by default any new keychain created via Keychain Access will lock itself every five minutes or when the computer goes to sleep.

Here’s how to fix this:

• Open Keychain Access (inside Applications -> Utilities)
• Right-click the login keychain
• Click Change Settings for Keychain “login”…

• Uncheck the Lock after X minutes of inactivity and Lock when sleeping checkboxes.
• Click Save

Restart the computer (or at least log out from the current account) and these popups shouldn’t annoy you again.