Suicide bombing and information processing deficit

Newman has a challenging alternate explanation for psychopathy, one which seems better able to model functional psychopaths.

The dominant scientific model asserts that psychopathic individuals are incapable of fear or other emotions, which in turn makes them indifferent to other people's feelings.
But Newman has a different idea entirely. He believes that psychopathy is essentially a type of learning disability or "informational processing deficit" that makes individuals oblivious to the implications of their actions when focused on tasks that promise instant reward. Being focused on a short-term goal, Newman suggests, makes psychopathic individuals incapable of detecting surrounding cues such as another person's discomfort or fear...
"People think (psychopaths) are just callous and without fear, but there is definitely something more going on," Newman says. "When emotions are their primary focus, we've seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal (emotional) response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely."

Given the example of the suicide bomber, it is quite plausible to posit that religious indoctrination, cultural priming, and social pressure could be applied to selectively induce an informational processing deficit, permitting a person to focus on the act of suicide bombing, becoming insensitive to other people's emotions and possibly their own. Idée fixe.

A womb's solution to male sibling rivalry?

A Canadian study reported that boys with more older biological brothers tended to be gay.

Previous research had revealed the more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he is to be gay, but the reason for this phenomenon was unknown...
Professor Anthony Bogaert from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, studied 944 heterosexual and homosexual men with either "biological" brothers, in this case those who share the same mother, or "non-biological" brothers, that is, adopted, step or half siblings.
... the link between the number of older brothers and homosexuality only existed when the siblings shared the same mother.
The amount of time the individual spent being raised with older brothers did not affect their sexual orientation.

One report contained a conservative objection:

Tim Dailey, a senior fellow at the conservative Center for Marriage and Family Studies disagreed...
“If it is indeed genetically based it is difficult to see how it could have survived in the gene pool over a period of time,” Mr. Dailey added.

It takes a bit of imagination. For instance, here's a simple hypothesis to consider: a reduction in sibling rivalry for large broods. A gay brother is less likely to fight a heterosexual brother for access to fertile females. Since males are capable of impregnating many females, there is little penalty for reducing net male fertility.

Market forces and female infanticide

Recently, it was reported that a scarcity of women in India has resulted in wife rental:

According to reports, prompted by a shortage of eligible single women, some poverty-stricken husbands in western India have gone to the extent of renting out their wives to other men on a monthly rate.
The local newspaper the Times of India reports that one man allowed his farm laborer wife, and mother of two, to stay with her boss for 8,000 rupees (175 dollars) a month. Many poor families and middlemen have also cashed in on the shortage of women by selling off their daughters to men in Gujarat, one of India's wealthiest states.

I wonder how long before girls are considered a long-term investment. With regard to societal change, perhaps this ongoing scarcity will result in the end of the traditional dowry that made daughters an economic liability instead of an asset.