Mycenaean Greece was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from 1600–1100 BC. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, writing system; the most prominent site was Mycenae, in the Argolid. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Midea in the Peloponnese, Thebes, Athens in Central Greece and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean and Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Asia Minor, the Levant and Italy; the Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in the fields of engineering and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, the Linear B, offers the first written records of the Indo-European Greek language and their religion included several deities that can be found in the Olympic Pantheon.

Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace-centered states that developed rigid hierarchical, political and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as wanax. Mycenaean Greece perished with the collapse of Bronze Age culture in the eastern Mediterranean, to be followed by the so-called Greek Dark Ages, a recordless transitional period leading to Archaic Greece where significant shifts occurred from palace-centralized to de-centralized forms of socio-economic organization. Various theories have been proposed for the end of this civilization, among them the Dorian invasion or activities connected to the "Sea Peoples". Additional theories such as natural disasters and climatic changes have been suggested; the Mycenaean period became the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and mythology, including the Trojan Epic Cycle. The Bronze Age in mainland Greece is termed as the "Helladic period" by modern archaeologists, after Hellas, the Greek name for Greece.

This period is divided into three subperiods: The Early Helladic period was a time of prosperity with the use of metals and a growth in technology and social organization. The Middle Helladic period faced a slower pace of development, as well as the evolution of megaron-type dwellings and cist grave burials; the Late Helladic period coincides with Mycenaean Greece. The Late Helladic period is further divided into LHI and LHII, both of which coincide with the early period of Mycenaean Greece, LHIII, the period of expansion and collapse of the Mycenaean civilization; the transition period from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Greece is known as Sub-Mycenaean. The decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B script, a writing system adapted for the use of the Greek language of the Late Bronze Age, demonstrated the continuity of Greek speech from the second millennium BC into the eighth century BC when a new Phoenician-derived alphabetic script emerged. Moreover, it revealed that the bearers of Mycenaean culture were ethnically connected with the populations that resided in the Greek peninsula after the end of this cultural period.

Lastly, the decipherment marked the advent of an Indo-European language in the Aegean region in contrast to unrelated prior languages spoken in adjoining areas. Various collective terms for the inhabitants of Mycenaean Greece were used by Homer in his 8th-century BC epic, the Iliad, in reference to the Trojan War; the latter was supposed to have happened in the late 13th – early 12th century BC, when a coalition of small Greek states under the king of Mycenae, besieged the walled city of Troy. Homer interchangeably used the ethnonyms Achaeans and Argives, to refer to the besiegers; these names appear to have passed down from the time they were in use to the time when Homer applied them as collective terms in his Iliad. There is an isolated reference to a-ka-wi-ja-de in the Linear B records in Knossos, Crete dated to c. 1400 BC, which most refers to a Mycenaean state on the Greek mainland. Egyptian records mention a T-n-j or Danaya land for the first time c. 1437 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmoses III.

This land is geographically defined in an inscription from the reign of Amenhotep III, where a number of Danaya cities are mentioned, which cover the largest part of southern mainland Greece. Among them, cities such as Mycenae and Thebes have been identified with certainty. Danaya has been equated with the ethnonym Danaoi, the name of the mythical dynasty that ruled in the region of Argos used as an ethnonym for the Greek people by Homer. In the official records of another Bronze Age empire, that of the Hittites in Anatolia, various references from c. 1400 BC to 1220 BC mention a country named Ahhiyawa. Recent scholarship, based on textual evidence, new interpretations of the Hittite inscriptions, recent surveys of archaeological evidence about Mycenaean-Anatolian contacts during this period, concludes that the term Ahhiyawa must have been used in reference to the Mycenaean world, or at least to a part of it; this term may have had broader connotations in some texts referring to all regions settled by Mycenaeans or regions under direct Mycenaean political control.

Another similar ethnonym Ekwesh in twelfth century BC Egyptian inscriptions, has been identified with the Ahhiyawans. These E

Richard F. "Dickie" Scruggs is an American former A6A naval aviator, a prominent trial lawyer, the brother-in-law of former U. S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Scruggs first came to the public eye after suing the asbestos industry on behalf of ill shipyard workers, he represented the state of Mississippi in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s. He represented hundreds of homeowners in lawsuits against insurance companies following Hurricane Katrina, a national class action of patients against HMOs in the early 2000s. Scruggs' legal career was derailed by his indictment in a judicial bribery scheme in 2007. Scruggs pled guilty to conspiracy to bribe Circuit Judge Henry L. Lackey in 2008, he entered a 2009 guilty plea for a scheme to influence Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter. Scruggs was sentenced to 5 years in prison on June 27, 2008 by U. S. District Judge Neal Biggers, he served six years in federal prison and was released in 2014. Kings of Tort, by Alan Lange and Tom Dawson, released in 2009, documents the rise and fall of Scruggs.

The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer, by veteran journalist Curtis Wilkie, was published in 2010. Scruggs was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, on May 17, 1946, but grew up in Pascagoula, Mississippi, he told Time. Scruggs was raised by his mother, who worked as a legal secretary at the Ingalls shipyard, she was an alumnus of Millsaps College. In 1971 he married a sister of Tricia Thompson Lott, wife of Trent Lott; the sisters are close, their families spent holidays together. Scruggs lived in a five-million-dollar mansion in Mississippi. In 2003, he bought the upper floor of a building on Courthouse Square in Oxford in which he housed the Scruggs Law Firm. In 2010, this space was purchased by the firm of W. Roberts Wilson, Jr. following the 2009 settlement of Wilson's longstanding suit against Scruggs for fees resulting from asbestos cases in the 1980s. Scruggs and his wife, were ardent supporters of the University of Mississippi, making large donations to several organizations on campus.

Scruggs Hall, which houses the Music department, was named in their honor. The Scruggs name was removed from the building following Scruggs guilty plea to bribery in March 2007; the building is now called "The Music Building". John Grisham reported that Scruggs, while serving his sentence in federal prison, worked to help inmates get GED certificates, expressed astonishment at the low level of literacy among the inmates. Scruggs took long walks with other white-collar inmates, he taught non-violent offenders, many who were imprisoned on drug charges, helping them to acquire their GEDs and nearly 60 students under his tutelage graduated. Scruggs has partnered with the Mississippi Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training program, which provides a remedial education and marketable skills to students seeking a GED. Scruggs was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon as an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi. Upon graduation and commissioning as a naval officer, Scruggs entered flight training and earned his wings as an A6 bomber pilot in 1970.

Scruggs was assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea during the Arab–Israeli conflict of October 1973, where he was stationed aboard the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt during the nuclear alert triggered by the Soviet threat to intervene in the Arab–Israeli War, he graduated from the University of Mississippi Law School in 1976, where he was a classmate of Mike Moore, a close friend who became the attorney general of Mississippi. Scruggs has made monetary contributions to the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and John McCain, the Senatorial campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, McCain, to numerous other candidates from both major political parties, he reportedly contributed to Tom Daschle, Susan Collins, Harry Reid. Scruggs was scheduled to host a fundraiser at his home for Senator Clinton's presidential campaign, on December 15, 2007, to be attended by former President Bill Clinton. However, that fundraiser was canceled after Scruggs' indictment. In the months following Scruggs' indictment, both the McCain and Biden campaigns returned his contributions.

Scruggs began his career with a prestigious law firm in Jackson, where he defended insurance companies. He moved back to Pascagoula and opened his own office. One of his first big legal victories was in representing workers at the Pascagoula shipyard who became fatally ill as a result of exposure to asbestos fibers, he encountered his first client in 1984 when he was approached by a shipyard worker looking for help with a lung disease. Scruggs paid for the client's medical tests. Scruggs took on 4200 direct clients and served as co-counsel to another 6000. In the 1990s, Scruggs was hired by Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore to assist with a lawsuit against thirteen tobacco companies for state-borne health care costs. Scruggs and his colleagues brought a concerted action, representing several states, which resulted in a settlement of over $248 billion, his performance in this case was portrayed by actor Colm Feore in the movie The Insider. Scruggs himself, as well as his second house in Pascagoula, Mississippi appeared in the film.

In total, Scruggs' firm Scruggs, Millette and Dent earned about $900 million in legal fees from the judgments, with about one third going to Scruggs. The total in fees Scruggs received resulted in public controversy regarding the amount that la

Derived via Latin from the Greek spastikos, the word spastic refers to an alteration in muscle tone affected by the medical condition spasticity, seen in spastic diplegia and many other forms of cerebral palsy and in terms such as "spastic colon". Colloquially, spastic can be pejorative. Disabled people in the United Kingdom consider "spastic" to be one of the most offensive terms related to disability; the medical term "spastic" came into use to describe cerebral palsy. The Scottish Council for the Care of Spastics was founded in 1946, the Spastics Society, an English charity for people with cerebral palsy, was founded in 1951. However, the word began to be used as an insult and became a term of abuse used to imply stupidity or physical ineptness: one, uncoordinated or incompetent, or a fool, it was colloquially abbreviated to shorter forms such as "spaz". Although the word has a much longer history, its derogatory use grew in the 1980s and this is sometimes attributed to the BBC children's TV show Blue Peter.

Phrases such as "joey", "deacon", "spaz" became used insults amongst children at that time. In 1994, the same year that Conservative MP Terry Dicks referred to himself in a House of Commons debate as "a spastic with cerebral palsy", the Spastics Society changed its name to Scope; the word "spastic" has been erased from popular English usage and is deemed unacceptable to use outside of specific medical contexts, thus reducing stigmatisation of the condition. However, UK schoolchildren developed a derogatory adaptation of the Spastic Society's new name, "scoper"; the current understanding of the word is well-illustrated by a BBC survey in 2003, which found that "spastic" was the second most offensive term in the UK relating to anyone with a disability. In 2007, Lynne Murphy, a linguist at the University of Sussex, described the term as being "one of the most taboo insults to a British ear"; the video game Mario Party 8 features a scene of the board Shy Guy Perplex Express where the character Kamek will cast a spell to switch train cars, being "Magikoopa magic!

Turn the train spastic! Make this ticket tragic!" Because of this, Mario Party 8 was recalled in the U. K. but was rereleased replacing, "spastic" with "erratic." In American slang, the term "spaz" has evolved from a derogatory description of people with disabilities, is understood as a casual word for clumsiness, sometimes associated with overexcitability, excessive startle response, excessive energy, involuntary or random movement, or hyperactivity. Some of these associations use the symptoms of cerebral palsy and other related disabilities as insults, its usage has been documented as far back as the mid-1950s. In 1965, film critic Pauline Kael, hypothesised that, "The term that American teenagers now use as the opposite of'tough' is'spaz'. Benjamin Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research in Cognitive Sciences, writes that by the mid-1960s the American usage of the term spaz shifted from "its original sense of'spastic or physically uncoordinated person' to something more like'nerdy, weird or uncool person.'"

In a June 2005 newsletter for "American Dialect Society", Zimmer reports that the "earliest occurrence of uncoordinated "spaz" he could find " is found in The Elastik Band's 1967 "undeniably tasteless garage-rock single" "Spazz". In 1978, Steve Martin introduced a character Charles Knerlman, aka "Chaz the Spaz" on Saturday Night Live, in a skit with Bill Murray called "Nerds". Bill Murray starred in the movie Meatballs which had a character named "Spaz." Both shows portrayed a spaz as a nerd or somebody uncool in a comic setting reinforcing the more casual use of the term in the United States by using it in a popular comedy show. The term still appears in North American movies or TV series such as Friends; as such it receives a different reaction from American audiences. In one episode, Rachel refers to herself as a "laundry spaz" due to her inability to competently do the laundry which directly relates to the original meaning about physical ability; this comment was deemed offensive enough by the British Board of Film Classification to give the episode a 12 rating.

Other episodes in the series are rated a step lower at PG. Rugrats: Tales From the Crib Snow White got a PG rating based on Angelica calling Kimi "Spazzy"; the difference in appreciation of the term between British and American audiences was highlighted by an incident with the golfer Tiger Woods. But as soon as I got on the green I was a spaz." His remarks drew no attention in America. But they were reported in the United Kingdom, where they caused offence and were condemned by a representative of Scope and Tanni Grey-Thompson, a prominent paralympian. On learning of the furore over his comments, Woods' representative promptly apologized. Shortly after Weird Al Yankovic's song "Word Crimes" was released, Yankovic stated that he had been unaware that the word spastic used in the song is "considered a offensive slur by some people" in the United Kingdom, apologized for its presence in his lyrics. In Australian English, for some time, term