XXX (2002 film)

xXx (pronounced "Triple X") is a 2002 American action film directed by Rob Cohen. It stars Vin Diesel as Xander Cage, a thrill seeking extreme sports enthusiast, stuntman and rebellious athlete-turned-reluctant spy for the National Security Agency who is sent on a dangerous mission to infiltrate a group of potential Russian terrorists in Central Europe. xXx also stars Asia Argento, Samuel L. Jackson, and Marton Csokas. Cohen previously directed The Fast and the Furious, in which Diesel also starred.

The film received mixed reviews but was a financial success for the studios, grossing US$277,448,382 worldwide. It was followed by a 2005 sequel entitled xXx: State of the Union.

Plot

An NSA mission to collect intel on Anarchy 99, a mercenary group made up of former Russian soldiers goes awry when the agent's identity is discovered by the group. NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons, overseeing the operation to get any intel on the group's plans for the biochemical weapon named "Silent Night" that has been missing since the fall of the Soviet Union, believes the only way to get close is to recruit an agent that would not have any ties to the United States government. He selects Xander Cage, also known as X, an extreme sports professional and host of his own television show who is outspoken against the government and was recently captured by the FBI for stealing and destroying a prominent California senator's car as an act of protest. Gibbons puts Cage through two tests - stopping a staged diner robbery, and escaping from a drug cartel's plantation in Colombia - and offers Cage the mission. Cage reluctantly agrees when Gibbons offers to wipe his criminal record away.

Heart 107.3

Heart 107.3 (call sign: 7XXX) is part of the Southern Cross Austereo network of Triple M Network radio stations, Based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Station History

Heart 107.3 previously Magic 107, began as 7HT in 1990. The station had obtained an FM conversion license. Subsequently a consortium lead by Andrew Reimer and local Hobart businessman John Bender who obtained financial support, arranged to lease the FM license.

The station's first local breakfast host was Brett Marley, who had been the former drive host on 7HO FM. The line-up also included well known Melbourne announcer and Hey Hey It's Saturday announcer John Blackman as well as Alan Jones.

In 1998, management negotiated with the TOTE of Tasmania who held an unused FM license and launched a second FM to join Triple T. The new station, MAGIC 107, based upon market research, was targeted at 40- to 65-year-olds with a music format of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s coupled with John Laws in the morning shift. This strategy was to complement Triple T's focus on an under 40 market. In the initial radio survey, MAGIC 107FM captured over one third of the Hobart radio listeners and dominated its target market.

XXX (ZZ Top album)

XXX is the thirteenth studio album by the American blues rock band ZZ Top, released in 1999 (see 1999 in music). The album's title is a reference to it being thirty years since the band was formed. The live track, "Sinpusher", is an altered version of their 1994 song "Pincushion" with different lyrics and a slightly heavier guitar riff. The album peaked at number 100 on the Billboard 200.

Reception

Allmusic only gave the album one and a half stars, and in its review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, he states: "After all, countless blues-based musicians, from Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters to B.B. King and The Rolling Stones, have aged gracefully, albeit in varying degrees. So why does ZZ Top sound so stiff and useless on XXX, a record celebrating their 30th anniversary? Part of that could be that the songwriting is decidedly weak, but a band as seasoned as ZZ Top should be able to make third-rate material at least listenable."

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, except where noted. 

Lubrication theory

In fluid dynamics, lubrication theory describes the flow of fluids (liquids or gases) in a geometry in which one dimension is significantly smaller than the others. An example is the flow above air hockey tables, where the thickness of the air layer beneath the puck is much smaller than the dimensions of the puck itself.

Internal flows are those where the fluid is fully bounded. Internal flow lubrication theory has many industrial applications because of its role in the design of fluid bearings. Here a key goal of lubrication theory is to determine the pressure distribution in the fluid volume, and hence the forces on the bearing components. The working fluid in this case is often termed a lubricant.

Free film lubrication theory is concerned with the case in which one of the surfaces containing the fluid is a free surface. In that case the position of the free surface is itself unknown, and one goal of lubrication theory is then to determine this. Surface tension may then be significant, or even dominant. Issues of wetting and dewetting then arise. For very thin films (thickness less than one micrometre), additional intermolecular forces, such as Van der Waals forces or disjoining forces, may become significant.

Television film

A television film (also known as a TV film; television movie; TV movie; telefilm; telemovie; made-for-television film; direct-to-TV film; movie of the week (MOTW or MOW); feature-length drama; single drama and original movie) is a feature-length motion picture that is produced for, and originally distributed by or to, a television network, in contrast to theatrical films, which are made explicitly for initial showing in movie theaters.

Origins and history

Though not exactly labelled as such, there were early precedents for "television movies", such as Talk Faster, Mister, which aired on WABD (now WNYW) in New York City on December 18, 1944, and was produced by RKO Pictures, or the 1957 The Pied Piper of Hamelin, based on the poem by Robert Browning, and starring Van Johnson, one of the first filmed "family musicals" made directly for television. That film was made in Technicolor, a first for television, which ordinarily used color processes originated by specific networks (most "family musicals" of the time, such as Peter Pan, were not filmed but broadcast live and preserved on kinescope, a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor – and the only method of recording a television program until the invention of videotape).

1894 in film

The following is an overview of the events of 1894 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.

Events