NOT PICTURED: His girlfriend, drinking vodka out of a salad spinner.

​Ever notice that when you crack open your third bottle of wine, your boyfriend or girlfriend is uncorking his or her third bottle as well? This may be evidence of a broader trend among young couples, a new study finds. USA Today reports that researchers in Nova Scotia discovered they "were able to predict one partner's binge drinking based on the other partner's binge drinking." Don't worry, single binge drinkers, there's bound to be someone out there for you, and they're probably throwing a shoe at the TV of an airport bar as you read this.

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According to a damning new report from the Democracy Program at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, thousands of New York votes were voided in the 2010 elections because people were confused by the optical scan voting machine's instructions. The study says that across New York State, 20,000 votes for governor were uncounted and the same thing happened to between 30,000 and 40,000 votes for other candidates.

The problem was that if you picked too many candidates ("overvoting"), you would see this screen:

NYU Brennan Center for Justice

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The authors of the report explained the issue to WNYC:

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Linguists have actually taken measures to study the famously unusual speech patterns of New York Times executive editor and noted dog-lover Jill Abramson. A video of Abramson talking, in case you're unaware:

You'll be shocked to know that scientists at Penn have found that Abramson's speech differs from other people's.

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​A new study has shown what hippies already know: psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms that makes you trip, also changes your personality for the better. In a study of 52 volunteers, "people who took the drug showed increases in the key personality dimension of openness -- being amenable to new ideas, experiences and perspectives -- more than a year later." Radical, but the conditions under which the subjects tripped don't sound all that mind-expanding:

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​A new study came out today from a labor-backed nonprofit called Alliance For a Greater New York (Align), and it presents a kind of doomsday scenario in which Walmart could open a whopping 159 stores in New York City. According to the study, if Walmart entered the NYC market this way, it could result in a net loss of almost 4,000 jobs, workers would lose on average 353 million dollars in wages per year, and there would be an increase in workers who must rely on public assistance to make ends meet. But how likely is this scenario? (Not very).

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​According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, texting -- beloved, good old American texting -- is starting to be slightly less new and exciting. The average number of texts per day sent and received by Americans only increased a tiny bit this year, though it's still more than 40. (Forty! For real.) It's no surprise that teenagers are still texting their hearts out and old people still don't know how. Some relatively astonishing figures:

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Taylor Momsen, teen smoker.

​There is a new quitting-smoking study coming out in October, and this one focuses on teenagers at the beginning of their illustrious smoking careers. The study shows that a smoking cessation program in combination with exercise is the most successful way to get teenagers to stop smoking entirely, compared with a "brief intervention" (a 15-minute stop-smoking lecture that could only have elicited eye-rolls) and an old-fashioned smoking cessation program. The researchers think they've pinpointed the reason: More >>

​A new study has found that only 10 percent of parents believe that their teenagers drink, and only five percent think that their kids smoke weed. For comparison's sake, consider the fact that 52 percent of teenagers say they drink and 28 percent say they smoke weed.

In other words, science has found that teenagers lie to their parents. Revelatory enough in and of itself, but the New York Times ups the ante and asks real live teens about their drinking and drugging behavior in a blog post: "If You Drink or Use Drugs, Do Your Parents Know?"

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​A study conducted by French scientists says that people who don't smoke marijuana are more likely to be obese than their stoned counterparts. The Daily News reports the researchers found that "between 22% to 25% of participants who didn't smoke pot were obese." Only 14% to 17% of people who said they smoke marijuana at least three times a week were overweight. The study followed American adults, so you know the smokers had access to the world's finest fast foods. Go ahead and eat that Mac 'n' Cheese Big Daddy Patty Melt from Denny's, heady amigo, you earned it.

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​Have you long suspected that your boss is a psychopath? Maybe not the kind who's killing prostitutes in a rain coat to the musical stylings of Huey Lewis and the News, but...actually, now you're thinking of it, maybe that? You'll be the opposite of relieved to know that if you work in a corporate environment, your boss has a higher chance of being a psychopath than someone in a non-managerial position, according to a new study.

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