The bottom line in this "dating advice from my geek dad" post? Smart guys date in parallel. Snip:
So a few days ago, I was on the phone, whining to my dad about throwing a Fifth Annual F–– Valentine's Day party and trying to figure out my personal life. My dad listened thoughtfully, and then began explaining to me what I was doing wrong. The problem, he said, is that I date girls serially.
Let's let V be potential difference between dating girls and doing something productive, I be current of love, and R be resistance to current flow. The problem with serial dating is the same as with serial circuits. If resistance starts to increase, you're stuck: because V = IR, and R is increasing, I must decrease to hold the equality. Worse still, because P = IV, you're just not going to have as much power with the increased resistance. Note on the above diagram that current is a lousy 214 mA, and we're only able to get 1.93 "jewels" from our relationships. This is even worse than it seems: because there's only one path–through all relationships–you'll end up spending the majority of your energy on the relationship with the greatest resistance, which is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.
Worst of all, if (horror of horrors) you actually blow out one of your relationships, all current stops until you can manually patch things up. Your love life will be at least momentarily in ruins.
Link (thanks, Wayne Correia!)
