Frozen by Frozen Planet?

Certain people of your acquaintance will tell you they can't watch movies that portray violence. They can't watch gangster movies, war movies, even movies about marriage or family life that involve rape or physical abuse. That sort of thing.
    I would never tell you that about what I watch; I'd watch anything portraying those things if its dramatic/artistic/cinematic quality were up to a certain standard (which I won't attempt to define, but which is implicit in my list of rated "Last 100 Films & TV Programs Watched").
    But in watching the first episode of Frozen Planet off our DVR Monday evening (To the Ends of the Earth¹), I learned (or was reminded) that the type of violence I do have a hard time watching is the violence of Nature's food chain. In that first episode, for example, a surfing penguin struggles valiantly (but unsuccessfully) to escape a hungry sea-lion, and a team of orcas create giant waves to (successfully) wash a seal off an ice floe. The doomed seal does manage to scramble back onto the floe, but it is so exhausted that moments later it can't resist when an orca grabs its tail and pulls it off the floe. The sadness of that seal's slow descent into the water to be made a meal of was almost unbearable to me.
    I think that's why I've watched nothing but episodes of Hack since then, rather than watch the second episode of Frozen Planet (Spring²).
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1. From the Internet Movie Database:

   David Attenborough travels to the end of the earth, taking viewers on an extraordinary journey across the polar regions of our planet, North and South. The Arctic and Antarctic are the greatest and least known wildernesses of all—magical ice worlds inhabited by the most bizarre and hardy creatures on earth. Our journey begins with David at the North Pole, as the sun returns after six months of darkness. We follow a pair of courting polar bears, which reveal a surprisingly tender side. Next stop is the giant Greenland ice cap, where waterfalls plunge into the heart of the ice and a colossal iceberg carves into the sea. Humpback whales join the largest gathering of seabirds on earth to feast in rich Alaskan waters. Further south, the tree line marks the start of the Taiga forest, containing one third of all trees on earth. Here, 25 of the world's largest wolves take on formidable bison prey. At the other end of our planet, the Antarctic begins in the Southern Ocean where surfing penguins struggle to escape a hungry sea-lion and teams of orcas create giant waves to wash seals from ice floes -a filming first. Diving below the ice, we discover prehistoric giants, including terrifying sea spiders and woodlice the size of dinner plates. Above ground, crystal caverns ring the summit of Erebus, the most southerly volcano on earth. From here we retrace the routes of early explorers across the formidable Antarctic ice-cap—the largest expanse of ice on our planet. Finally, we rejoin David at the South Pole, exactly one hundred years after Amundsen then Scott were the first humans to stand there.

2. Ibid:

   Each spring, massive sweet water thawing rapidly transforms the polar regions and the surrounding seas, where broken-off ice floats to. This is crucial in the life cycle of many species, sometimes extremely elaborate. Many colonies (re)unite to mate, hatch and/or start raising offspring, especially in 'temperate' parts, such as South Georgia island.

After the debate

Within an hour of last night's presidential debate, the following three comments (#8, #9 and #10) were posted on the editorial, "Politics of Attack," in The New York Times. They sort of say it all:

11:16 p.m. McCain visibly became more and more desperate this evening during the debate against a more articulate and poised Obama. McCain stuttered, breathed heavily, and repeated the same phrases over, and over, and over again. The last several weeks have clearly worn him down, and now he's making a last ditch effort. Mr. McCain, you're too old for this.
                    — Emily, Pennsylvania

11:21 p.m. The other night, an audience member shouted to McCain that Obama is a "terrorist." McCain smiled. Then, where Palin was speaking to a different audience, a member shouted "kill him"^* when she mentioned Obama—and she smiled. (MSN videos captured these incidents. [I could not verify this.])

What is going on here??? I am tempted to go get a bumper sticker made, "Restore Decency—Elect Obama."
                    — Darster, Birmingham

11:23 p.m. McCain looked old, stiff, and graceless in the debate. He was condescending, snide, and sarcastic. In contrast, Obama looked vital, strong, graceful and was very, very articulate and eloquent. He certainly went on the offensive but did it without coming across as disrespectful. He of course did not look or behave like the terrorist Palin/McCain have been trying to turn him into. He makes them look like mean-spirited fools with their pathetic character attacks.
                    — AJBF, New York City

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* From the Times editorial:

Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. "This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America," Ms. Palin has taken to saying.

That line follows passages in Ms. Palin's new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama's ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she's done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers—and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, "sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report [possibly "Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame," by Dana Milbank] said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled "kill him!" as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.

Mr. McCain's aides haven't even tried to hide their cynical tactics, saying they were "going negative" in hopes of shifting attention away from the financial crisis—and by implication Mr. McCain's stumbling response.

We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics. He was driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear, orchestrated by some of the same people who are now running his campaign.