Living in Europe is getting competition. “Viewropa” is a community blog started by members of MetaFilter who are “attempting an experiment in multi-lingual, collaborative and Euro-focused blogging”. And it’s a good looking experiment, too.

One of their first posts is about attempts by the European Space Agency to find more women who want to get laid for the Women International Space Simulation for Exploration (WISE) study, which requires “24 female test subjects to remain in bed, slightly tilted head down at six degrees below the horizontal, for a total of 60 days.”

Particularly those in the control group, who will receive “no extra stimulus over the course of the 60-day bed-rest period” (sic!) will need to tell themselves rather often that “WISE offers European women a unique opportunity to be part of space research and human spaceflight in Europe.”

Despite my effort to resist such a blatant exploitation of entirely unfair national stereotypes, I can’t help but noticing that the Agency mentions in their press statement that so far, mostly French women have indicated their interest in the slightly less than horizontal occupation…