Dear Breakup Girl,

One of my project partners, who is also a reasonably close friend, confided to me recently that she likes my roommate. They have been best friends for a couple of years, and my roommate asked her out about a year ago. She told him at the time that she did not want a relationship because she was not yet over another serious relationship she had ended recently-ish.

Last night I found out that my roommate still has feelings for my friend, but he’s bitter that she “rejected” him a year ago. They are still close friends, but he cannot accept the idea that her feelings may have changed.

I didn’t say anything, as I am sworn to both of their confidences. However, I think that they would make a great couple and would be very happy together, seeing as how they’re already close. I’ve tried to drop subtle hints to get them to talk about it or at least tell each other how they feel. I’m either not being direct enough, or they are only hearing what they want to.

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s strategy for attracting bright young talent gives new meaning to the phrase “nuclear fusion.”

As Jim McDermott, NCR chief human capital officer, said last week, “There are incentives, and then there are incentives. When we’re hiring, we say, ‘Is there a significant other in the picture?’ If there’s no significant other, I tell them, ‘We can help.’ ”

As the Federal Times blog explains, “McDermott said his unorthodox recruitment pitch works because while nuclear engineers may know how to split atoms, they’re not quite so adept on the dating front.”

I admit I got a bit skeeved upon reading “human capital officer” in the same breath as “dates” — and McDermott never explains exactly how his group can help — but there is something refreshing in that cool logic. Who can appreciate a nerd as well as a nerd? If highly specialized work is your life, then the physics lab might in fact be the best place to — as the blog puts it –  “meet other single engineers (who probably won’t roll their eyes at Star Trek or lectures on reactor cooling systems).” Niche dating in all flavors, especially nerd dating is on the rise thanks to the internet, and as BG points out, many geeky pursuits are inherently social.

And nobody’s being pimped out here. With more gender balance in the work environment, the notion of finding a suitable mate is extended to every engineer being courted by the  Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So far, NRC’s dating scheme, whatever it is — and which McDermott jokingly calls “NRC Harmony,” after eHarmony — has resulted in about eight or nine weddings.

Coda: While some blog commenters think find McDermott’s candor stereotyping and impolitic, NerdyGirl truly gets in the last word:”Who let the Muggles in? They’re the only ones who are whinging about what McDermott said. When your head is full of crunchy data goodness, it’s smart to have someone who understands that you don’t have time to get all ‘socially smooth’ like the Muggles are. There are too many interesting things to research and process…”

Lagniappe: 16 Golden Retrievers Teach You About Atoms! You’re welcome.

Listen up, single New Yorkers.  Think it’s impossible to find a good worm in the biggest of apples?  Meet Sandra Schwartz-Pingrey, Founder and President of Cause & Affection Dating (formerly Cause and Effect), a matchmaking service that — like others before, but with a more individualized touch — brings together this perfect couple: dating and volunteering.

As Time Out New York reports, “a 2007 study conducted by the Corporation for National & Community Service revealed that New York’s volunteering rates ranked in the bottom three of 50 U.S. cities.”  Oof! Cause & Affection is doing its part to help improve this ranking by offering clients (screened via face-to-face interviews!  no online profiles!) a date structured around a charitable cause, such as taking shelter pooches out — together — for those proverbial “long walks.”

Soup kitchens can’t guarantee soul mates, of course, but hey: as Cause & Affection says, “Even if it goes bad…you did good.”

Mind Hacks recently featured a highly amusing husband and wife rating chart from the 1930s, invented by marriage counselor George W. Crane, MD, Ph.D. How it works: your spouse earns merit or demerit points based on his or her behaviors and characteristics. Some (“Snores”) are things we can still relate to, while the rest offer a curious peek into the norms and expectations of that era (demerits for a husband who “talks of efficiency of his stenographer or other women” or a wife who “fails to sew on buttons or darn socks regularly”).

Crane aimed to be “scientific” in the development of this test; true to form, according to the American Psychological Association, he started the Scientific Marriage Foundation, which took a “scientific” approach to marriage and claimed to have set up more than 5,000 marriages.

I wonder what a modern version of this questionnaire would look like. Demerits for “brings laptop to bed”?