Friday, April 29, 2011

Prohibición a tomar fotos de monumentos y parques publicos en San Juan, llena de ira al publico en general.



Imagínese que usted va a sacar una foto de su familia en un parque publico en San Juan, y lo próximo es que un Policía Municipal te lo impida, ya que hay un estatuto que lo prohíbe.

Esto es lo que reseña El Nuevo Día.

Si se casa, se gradúa o tiene un quinceañero pronto y planificaba llegar hasta las diversas y hermosas plazas de la Ciudad Capital a tomar fotos con un trípode o tal vez algún lente profesional, sepa que para hacerlo necesita permiso del gobierno.

Y, claro está, como toda oficina gubernamental o municipal, sólo lo obtendrá de lunes a viernes en horario regular de oficina en las instalaciones de la Compañía de Turismo en el Viejo San Juan o en las oficinas de los centros urbanos de cada región de la Capital.

Un reglamento firmado por el hoy gobernador Luis Fortuño en 1994, cuando dirigía Turismo, y el Código de Desarrollo Económico del Municipio de San Juan, así lo estipulan, o al menos así es interpretado por los funcionarios.

La situación de los permisos de este tipo la vivió una pareja de jóvenes que llegó con un fotógrafo a Ventana al Mar, en el Condado, para retratarse donde él le pidió matrimonio.

No pudieron hacerlas, un sábado, porque allí se enteraron que necesitaban autorización y por ser fin de semana no pudieron tramitarla.

“No sabíamos nada, me molesté pero cambiamos de lugar porque el guardia no tiene la culpa. Pero pasó lo mismo en otros sitios”, contó molesta, aunque resignada, Raquel Bonilla, oriunda de Yauco, pero que reside en Manatí.

La situación fue constatada por INS al conversar con un guardia de seguridad en ese lugar.

“Ya no se puede retratar con trípodes, flash, lentes extendidos… Así como lo estás haciendo tú sí (con la cámara en mano), pero lo demás, para Turismo, es comercial”, indicó.

Los ciudadanos tienen que solicitar el permiso con, al menos, cinco días de anticipación.

Pero para los turistas, según testigos, en ocasiones la realidad es otra.

Jackmarie Ortiz, que trabaja en producciones teatrales y está colaborando en la producción de un largometraje local, sostuvo que, con incredulidad, observó cómo permiten a los turistas recién bajados de un barco crucero tomar fotos con sus cámaras profesionales, trípodes y demás, sin resistencia, contrario con lo que ocurre con los residentes locales.

“A los turistas no les dicen nada ni les piden permisos y lo que tienen por lente es el ‘supertubo’…”, recordó Ortiz del tiempo que trabajó en la taquilla del Teatro Tapia.

Además, contó cuán difícil se les hizo conseguir un permiso “para grabar una escena en la plaza del edificio donde está la Lotería Electrónica (en Hato Rey). Ni el policía que me lo prohibió supo decirme dónde conseguir el permiso”.

De hecho, en algunos casos los permisos tienen que estar acompañados por seguros de responsabilidad pública a favor de Turismo o el municipio de San Juan, para poder responder en casos de accidentes o daños.

La portavoz de Turismo, Annie Rodríguez, explicó que se trata de una medida para evitar el vandalismo, el terrorismo y otros delitos en la zona y proteger la propiedad que maneja la agencia.

Turismo cobra, según el reglamento, por pie cuadrado a utilizar y dependerá del tipo de actividad que se realice, si es privada, cultural, cívica o promocional.

Reacciona el Municipio de San Juan

Por su parte, Suyín Huertas, del municipio de San Juan, explicó que siempre se piden los permisos y se exige un seguro en caso de algún accidente, pero afirmó que nunca se ha cobrado (a ciudadanos o compañías) porque la exposición de las plazas sanjuaneras representa aumento en el turismo para la Capital.

Mientras, los residentes en el país deberán recordar acudir, de lunes a viernes, a las oficinas correspondientes de Gobierno para solicitar sus permisos, algunos pagando, para tomarse sus fotos en la concurrida y turística ciudad principal de la Isla, de lo contrario, pueden exponerse a multas por usar los espacios que pagaron y mantienen con sus contribuciones.

Indignación general La prohibición de sacar fotos en monumentos de San Juan generó ayer indignación y muestra de ello son los cientos de comentarios que colgaron ayer los usuarios de la página de El Nuevo Día en Facebook. “¿El gobierno es dueño de San Juan? ¿Qué nos pasa?”, reclamó una lectora. “¿No se supone que vivimos en una democracia? ¿Quién es el gobierno para hacer esto? Se trata de nuestra Isla. Y luego dicen que Puerto Rico lo hace mejor!!!! Ja”, comentó otra persona.“Me dan ganas de sacar la cámara y retratar todo en San Juan”, lanzó como reto otra lectora.

“¡No había escuchado estupidez más grande que esta!!!! Ah, ya sé, es que no hay nada que hacer... Puerto Rico no tiene problemas de criminalidad, drogas, asesinatos, la economía, la EDUCACIÓN!!!! y por eso, PIERDEN el tiempo en estupideces como esta...”, ironizó otro lector.

“¡Lean bien!!! Es si vas hacer sesión de fotos o utilizar equipo profesional, no cámaras comunes! Además, esto es un país democrático y libre de expresión. Qué los policías se pongan para su número, ellos están allí para seguridad, y no para velar cámaras! ¿Qué le pasa? ¡Están locos! ¡Todos en este gobierno!”, reclamó otra persona.


Por eso ¡A PROTESTAR!
El domingo 15 de Mayo, todos los que somos ciudadanos y fotógrafos amateurs y profesionales vamos a invadir las plazas y parques de San Juan y Condado y vamos a fotografiar. Para mas información y unirte a la manifestación ve a este enlace; La Gran Jornada Fotográfica en San Juan.

¡Yo voy a decir presente!

Thursday, April 28, 2011

The new Dr. Kerworkian? 91 year old woman sells suicide kits over the Internet!


Ah...The Internet. You can find almost anything on it! Including suicide kits!

A shadowy online company selling suicide kits recently claimed its first confirmed victim. Winston Ross talks exclusively with the entrepreneur behind it: a grieving 91-year-old woman.
The paramedics who showed up to Nick Klonoski’s house on Highland Drive four months ago discovered the 29-year-old’s lifeless body, covered up to the neck by a blanket. It was his brother Jake, detectives learned, who’d found Nick lying in his bed less than an hour beforehand, a clear plastic bag over his head, and a plastic tube running from the bag to an orange metal helium tank. Next to the tank was a white box, decorated with a butterfly, the box the plastic bag and tube had arrived in the mail in, with a book titled Final Exit inside.
“Is it the book and the kit?” asked the first police officers to arrive on the scene. The paramedics nodded knowingly. “Yep.”
These materials were assembled and sold to Klonoski last June for $60 by a company that calls itself the Gladd Group, which is not really a group at all. It’s a woman from the San Diego suburb of La Mesa, California, named Sharlotte Hydorn. She is 91 years old.
Each of the kits Hydorn assembles by hand is a simple contraption designed for a single purpose: people kill themselves with it by encasing their head in a bag of helium, which is lethal in pure form. People like Klonoski, the son of a U.S. district judge and whose funeral was attended by more than a thousand people. The Gladd Group’s estimated annual sales are $98,000. That means Sharlotte Hydorn sells more than 1,600 suicide kits every year.
“I’m too busy to cash the bloody checks,” she told The Daily Beast. “I haven’t made a deposit in three months.”
You have probably never heard of the helium-hood kit. Neither had Oregon State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, until he read a newspaper story published last month about Klonoski’s death. The horrified legislator quickly floated a bill to make it a Class C felony to sell such a kit. The first to testify at his April 11 hearing was one of Klonoski’s four brothers, Zach. Zach told the state senate judiciary panel that “my brother Nick was a beautiful person...It would be a disservice to him to remember him only for the way he died.”
Zach didn’t discuss his brother’s reasons for killing himself, but Nick’s mother, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken, told police he’d been running every day and had been in an upbeat mood, despite battling a severe cold over the past several weeks. Klonoski’s brothers told the Eugene Register-Guard that he’d battled bouts of pain and fatigue for years without a diagnosis, that he was depressed about the effect that had on his life, and that he was worried he’d never regain his normal health.
“This is analogous to putting a gun-vending machine next to a depression clinic.”
Klonoski wasn’t terminally ill, so he wouldn’t have qualified for lethal prescriptions provided to eligible Oregonians under the state’s Death With Dignity Act, one of only two states that allow assisted suicide. But he was able to buy Hydorn’s kit on the Internet, to rent a helium tank from nearby Party City for $175, and do the job himself.
This, an emotional Zach testified at the hearing earlier this month, should be illegal.
“In a society where so many people suffer from depression and other mental-health disorders,” Zach said, “this company has found their niche in the market by peddling death. This is analogous to putting a gun-vending machine next to a depression clinic. The Gladd company, so named as to avoid suspicion in case family members happen to sign for or come across the package, made $60 off my brother’s death.”
Though Hydorn admits she did sell Zach’s brother his implement of death, she makes no apology for it. She has a story of her own.
It was 30 years ago, Hydorn said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, that her husband, “a six-foot-four, wonderful, handsome, loving, intelligent man,” was dying of colon cancer. After several operations, the cancer had spread to his brain, and surgeons had cut a hole in his stomach, out of which came his excrement, into a bag.
“It was my duty, and I did it willingly, to empty that thing every three or four hours,” she said. “One time I ran out of bags and went all over town looking for a pharmacy that sold them. Even years after my husband died, I would wake up and say, ‘I’ve got to go get those bags.’ ”
No one should have to go through that, Hydorn said, to die a slow, painful death in a hospital bed. “Death should be with loved ones beside you, holding your hand."
Not long after her husband died, Hydorn met a man named Derek Humphry, a longtime advocate of assisted suicide and founder of the Hemlock Society, which has worked to change laws prohibiting the practice around the country. It was Humphry, in 1992, who penned Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying, which effectively serves as a manual for how to kill yourself and which Humphry told The Register-Guard sold 500,000 copies in the first six weeks.

Monday, April 25, 2011

And the Box Office Champion this week is...


Via Deadline Hollywood / Nikki Finke

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM, 5TH UPDATE: Studios tell me this Easter Weekend began and ended with rain and storms in 2/3s of the U.S. and the first huge "up" weekend of $125M, which is +34% from last year. Twentieth Century Fox's Rio 3D may be about a bird, but Friday and Saturday numbers showed "it's holding like a rock," a studio exec emailed me.

Lionsgate's latest in Tyler Perry's franchise, Madea's Big Happy Family, had the best per screen average of all the top-grossing pictures. This is, after all, Perry's sixth cross-dressing film; still, the last one opened to a $41M weekend and the one before to $30M and this will be even lower by end of day Sunday. scoring an "A-" CinemaScore was Fox 2000's Water For Elephants based on Sara Gruen's best-selling book and written by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Francis Lawrence.

Clearly, the classy ad campaign was intriguing for adults who don't rush out to see films, and for Robert Pattinson's Twi-hards who do. But this beautifully filmed but searing drama was considered a hard sell. It was also a fine weekend for Universal's holdover Hop from Illumination Entertainment after passing $100M. And Disneynature's African Cats narrated by Samuel Jackson played well for a niche nature movie that truly deserves to be seen, as evidenced by its "A-" CinemaScore. Full analysis coming. Here is the Top 10:

1. Rio 3D (Blue Sky Studio/Fox) Week 2 [3,842 Theaters]
Friday $10.6M, Saturday $10M, Easter Weekend $26.6M (-32%), Cume $81.1M

2. Madea's Big Happy Family (Tyler Perry/Lionsgate) NEW [2,288 Theaters]
Friday $10.5M, Saturday $9.1M, Easter Weekend $25.7M

3. Water For Elephants (Fox 2000/Fox) NEW [2,817 Theaters]
Friday $7M, Saturday $6.5M, Easter Weekend $17.5M

4. Hop (Illumination Entertainment/Universal) Week 4 [3,616 Theaters]
Friday $4.8M, Saturday $4.5M, Easter Weekend $12.4M, Cume $100.4M

5. Scream 4 (Miramax/Dimension/Weinstein Co) Week 2 [3,314 Theaters]
Friday $2.7M, Saturday $2.7M, Easter Weekend $7.1M (-62%), Cume $31.1M

6. African Cats (Disneynature/Walt Disney Studios) NEW [1,220 Theaters]
Friday $3.3M, Saturday $1.6M, Easter Weekend $6.4M

7. Soul Surfer (FilmDistrict/Sony) Week 3 [2,240 Theaters]]
Friday $2.3M, Saturday $1.9M, Easter Weekend $5.6M, Cume $28.6M

8. Insidious (FilmDistrict) Week 4 [2,130 Theaters]
Friday $2.1M, Saturday $1.9M, Easter Weekend $5.3M, Cume $44.1M

9. Hanna (Focus Features) Week 3 [2,383 theaters]
Friday $1.8M, Saturday $2M, Easter Weekend $5.2M, Cume $31.7M

10. Source Code (Summit) Week 4 [2,363 Theaters]
Friday $1.8M, Saturday $1.9M, Easter Weekend $5M, Estimated Cume $44.6M

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Weird Tuesday post, just for you!




Well, this happens as I'm bored to tears at my job. So in my travels thru the Intewebs, I happened to stumble upon a collection of very weird Album cover art, this from an era when music was on LP's (What's an LP? Ask your parents, you rascal and by the way; GET OFF MY PORCH!!!) Here's some smaples. The whole enchilada is right here! Click it, don't be afraid, you wuss!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Las mas taquilleras para el fin de semana de Abril 1-3, 2011


En Estados Unidos:

1- Hop
2- Source Code
3- Insidious
4- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
5- Limitless

En Puerto Rico

1- Hop
2- Source Code
3- Red Riding Hood
4- Limitless
5- Battle: Los Angeles