There are European astronauts????

In the extremely stupid book, Distracted, the Erosion of Attention and the Coming of the Dark Age, Maggie Jackson bemoans the fact that American astronauts dislike communal meals and would prefer to do away with dining tables altogether during space flights, unlike European astronauts, whom she adores and who just love to eat communally. Miss C thinks it is because our astronauts have important duties to which they would rather attend and that the French consider no duty more important than filling their smug mugs.

That Europeans have astronauts is news to Miss C. Astronauts are typically a manly bunch, even the gals, and Miss C has noticed that European men as a whole don't seem to have even two testicles to rub together. But perhaps there is now affirmative action for astronauts and since Europeans have been traditionally excluded from space exploration, on account of they were on the wrong side of WWII and didn't get any of Hitler's engineers after the war, the space agencies are making it up to them by lowering the physical requirements needed to become an astronaut.