i recently watched werner herzog's documentary on antarctica and the intriguing characters attracted to life off the map entitled encounters at the end of the world. despite my appreciation of herzog's past work i had avoided this film until now, assuming it was yet another world in crisis doc which are so of the moment. i should have known the eccentric german would've put his own spin on the genre. until now i had held the misconception that antarctica was a chunk of (likely melting) ice with a few scientific field stations on it. in actual fact mcmurdo, the largest settlement and base camp of sorts for all those arriving at the bottom of the world has a seasonal population of up to 1,000 residents, with ATM and all. if one didn't know they could be forgiven for mistaking it for a northern canadian mining town. the bulk of the film focuses on the human characters who are attracted to such a remote and desolate place - essentially a character study of lifelong vagabonds and gypsies. it all makes for fascinating viewing but what really grabbed my attention was the scene focusing on penguins. the shitty frame above shows one such monogamous and flightless bird (tiny black speck center bottom) - however, this particular specimen is one of the oft-documented suicidal penguins. instead of adhering to the perennial mating patterns hard-coded into their DNA some penguins break away from the pack and their mate and simply wander off into the interior of this vast continent (an area larger than europe). as the director points out, such penguins are essentially waddling off to their own suicide. protocol amongst the scientific community dictates that humans should never impede the penguins path and, as such, humans can only standby idly as these suicidal specimens chart their course to certain death. apparently humans aren't alone in their capacity for individual thought.