Every Tuesday and Thursday Friday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.
Brookland
Brookland resident Courtney knows that it’s hard to find a cat-sitter—and it’s even harder to find a cat-sitter who is willing and able to wield little teeny-tiny insulin needles and inject them into a squirming kitty twice a day. “We are going away soon and though we have someone coming to stay with our cats, we need someone who knows how to give a shot two times a day to our diabetic cat—every 12 hours to be exact.” Courtney writes. “I was wondering if anyone out there is a vet or vet tech and would be up to doing shots, as shots freak out the person staying with them…Thanks!!”
shepherdpark
So much for diggin’ the scene with a gangster lean. It seems one man’s leisurely cruise through Shepherd Park is apparently another man’s menacing case of the neighborhood. Aja posts “Burgundy Cadillac with Tinted Windows is prowling the neighborhood.311 contacted.”
TakomaDC
In the annals of Takoma diversity: For a personal project, neighbor Judy enlists the help of some of Takoma Park’s finest amateur translators. “Any linguistics in the neighborhood?” she asks. “[I]’m looking for the translation of:
* gift
* clarity
* freedom
in as many languages as possible, including sanskrit, but not french and spanish.” Rich tells Judy to look online, as he did, to find out that “freedom” in Sanskrit is svatantra. Yet Seth cautions against using the Web for accurate translations. “In Hebrew, freedom = he-rut ????, gift = ma-ta-na ????, clarity = be-hee-rut ?????? You have to be careful with dictionaries and machine translation. You might get word senses and cases or declensions other than what you want.” Pamela steps up with Swahili: “gift is zawadi; clarity is ubayana (my dictionary says clarification); freedom is uhuru.” Steve chimes in with the Italian translations, another Steve offers up German and Latin, Simone provides Portuguese translation, and Rich comes through, again, with Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Russian, and Yiddish.