While browsing the adoption forums, I came across a notice about Arthur. If you have a child under 4, you probably already know Arthur, his relentlessly upbeat Ziggy Marley theme song, his gang of animal friends and his occasional nuggets of only-parents-will get this cleverness. Well, now Arthur is doing adoption.

Yep, Arthur's buddy Binky* is getting a baby sister named Mei Lin. There are plot synopses (there are two adoption-related episodes) here, with a few images apparently taken from the episodes. Mei Lin certainly looks like Binky, although with black hair and pigtails. I suppose a cross-species family would have been a little too confusing even for public television viewers. (Or is she an aardvark too? I honestly can't tell.)

*Arthur is ostensibly an aardvark, albeit one with a shorter, rounder snout and absolutely no spade-like claws for tunneling into dry, hard clay. Buster is a rabbit. Is Binky a bulldog? He certainly seems to have a bulldog's sweet-but-blustery personality.

It may be airing as early as this Friday if not earlier, so check your local listings. The early word is that it's a good story.

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If you'd rather spend some time with (slightly) more grown-up material about the daughters of China, you might get a kick out of reading about Cheng I Sao, China's pirate queen. No, not the copying-the-latest-BMW-SUV kind of piracy, but the cutlasses and rum and "I am a free prince!" kind. The kind that looks so great on the big screen. (Screenwriters! Pay attention!)

Cheng (or rather "Wife of Cheng") was a prostitute in 1801 when she married a pirate captain.
After her husband died, she assumed control of his operation and expanded it. At its height, she commanded more than 1,500 ships in her Red Flag Fleet* and inspired the loyalty of more than 80,000 sailors, and outran or outgunned the law for years. She was offered amnesty and retired in 1810 - yes, retired - as history's most successful pirate.

*More than a century before the Communists used the red flag as their banner. Coincidence?

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