Pain

Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli, such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting alcohol on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone". Because it is a complex, subjective phenomenon, defining pain has been a challenge. The International Association for the Study of Pain's widely used definition states: "Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage." In medical diagnosis, pain is a symptom.

Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease. Simple pain medications are useful in 20% to 70% of cases.

Pain (philosophy)

Philosophy of pain may be about suffering in general or more specifically about physical pain. The experience of pain is, due to its seeming universality, a very good portal through which to view various aspects of human life. Discussions in philosophy of mind concerning qualia has given rise to a body of knowledge called philosophy of pain, which is about pain in the narrow sense of physical pain, and which must be distinguished from philosophical works concerning pain in the broad sense of suffering. This article covers both topics.

Historical views of pain

Two near contemporaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, Jeremy Bentham and the Marquis de Sade had very different views on these matters. Bentham saw pain and pleasure as objective phenomena, and defined utilitarianism on that principle. However the Marquis de Sade offered a wholly different view - which is that pain itself has an ethics, and that pursuit of pain, or imposing it, may be as useful and just as pleasurable, and that this indeed is the purpose of the state - to indulge the desire to inflict pain in revenge, for instance, via the law (in his time most punishment was in fact the dealing out of pain). The 19th-century view in Europe was that Bentham's view had to be promoted, de Sade's (which it found painful) suppressed so intensely that it - as de Sade predicted - became a pleasure in itself to indulge. The Victorian culture is often cited as the best example of this hypocrisy.

Pain (Puff Daddy song)

"Pain" is a song on Puff Daddy's 1997 album No Way Out.

The song is about tragedies from Puff Daddy's life, including the murder of his father Melvin Combs in 1972, the New York City College Stampede of 1991 and the death of his label-mate and friend Notorious BIG in 1997.

The song features audio from Notorious BIG which was recorded before his death when the song was made.

There is a completely different song also entitled Pain on the follow-up album Forever.

Gens (anthropology)

Gens was used by Lewis H. Morgan (in Ancient Society) and Friedrich Engels (in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State), among others, to refer to a group of people who were related through their female ancestor (which was the basis of mother right). Confusingly, it is also used to refer to groups of people who are related through their male ancestor by other anthropology writers.

References

Sega Genesis

The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive (Japanese: メガドライブ, Hepburn: Mega Doraibu) in most regions outside North America, is a 16-bit home video game console which was developed and sold by Sega Enterprises, Ltd. The Genesis was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega first released the console as the Mega Drive in Japan in 1988, followed by a North American debut under the Genesis moniker in 1989. In 1990, the console was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, by Ozisoft in Australasia, and by Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, the systems were distributed by Samsung and were known as the Super Gam*Boy (Hangul: 수퍼겜보이), and later the Super Aladdin Boy (Hangul: 수퍼알라딘보이).

Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis hardware was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as a primary CPU and a Zilog Z80 as a secondary processor. The system supports a library of more than 900 games created both by Sega and a wide array of third-party publishers and delivered on ROM-based cartridges. It can also play Master System games when the separately sold Power Base Converter is installed. The Genesis has benefited from several peripherals and network services, as well as multiple first-party and third-party variations of the console that focus on extending its functionality.