Idiot. I'm from Ireland, I know Gillen is from Ireland and his accent is still fucking awful. I watched it with 3 of my friends (also from Ireland) and we ALL thought his accent was terrible. You do realise that a Dublin accent is not the same as a rural irish accent, right?

As for O'Dowd, the end was where his lack of dramatic acting ability really let the whole thing down.

And you couldn't figure out who was the culprit? That was completely irrelevant and I knew who the culprit was after watching the trailer (you hear his accent in the confessional).

Oh and go watch the fucking movie in a cinema , you cheap dickhead.

According to the American Road and Transport Builders Association, the upfront costs of current construction are pretty significant already:

"Construct a new 2-lane undivided road – about $2-$3 million per mile in rural areas, about $3-5 million in urban areas.

Mill and resurface a 4-lane road – about $1.25 million per mile.

Expand an Interstate Highway from 4 lanes to 6 lanes – about $4 million per mile."

So really you'd have to look at the replacement costs of a technology like this rather than just assigning all those initial costs to the category of boondoggle.

But this really points to a larger issue that makes this question very hard to quantify and is actually addressed by the Solar Roadways people:

"For an accurate cost comparison between current systems and the Solar Roadways system, you'd have to combine the costs of current roads (including snow removal, line repainting, pothole repair, etc.), power plants (and the coal or nuclear material to run them), and power and data delivery systems (power poles and relay stations) to be comparable with the Solar Roadway system, which provides all three. So the comparison is more like an apple to a fruit basket."

One further interesting note from their website is that the numbers they used for electricity generation of the solar roadway system came out of their testing. In Northern Idaho. In the dead of winter. In other words, the worst possible conditions for solar panel systems.

You're not wrong. I'm actually glad I live in Nebraska, it's right wing obviously, but it's not total nutbag like the south. The Republicans in Nebraska did lose their shit in 2008 when the Omaha district voted for Obama and they tried to go back to winner take all. But I think cooler heads prevailed as if trends continue, urban populations will outstrip the rural areas and more traditionally red States start turning blue. At least in a split vote system, even if the state goes blue, the right still retains a minority voice instead of no voice. I had been following wolf pac but hearing about this makes me want to be a member now

I can totally understand where Morgan is coming from about the guns thing. I live in Japan now which has very strict gun laws. Virtually no one here owns a handgun personally. Cops are issued one for their jobs but never use them (it would be national news if a cop discharged a firearm in the line of duty). People who do legally own guns (mostly shotguns and rifles) have a legitimate need for one--they live in rural areas and stand a good chance of encountering bears or other dangerous wildlife.

As I understand it, England is very similar (even stricter--their cops don't normally carry guns). So coming from those kinds of cultures, America's gun culture seems completely bizarre. Japanese people find it baffling that anyone living in a first-world country would want to--let alone "need" to--own a handgun unless they were actively engaged in criminal activity. I'm sure Morgan feels something similar.

Personally, I admire Switzerland's approach to gun control--the military trains virtually everyone in how to safely use firearms and has them keep a government-issued military weapon in their home (but without ammo--in the event of an invasion or mobilization of the militia you have to report for duty to be issued ammo). What you get then is a population that respects and knows how to use firearms and therefore enthusiastically uses them for both sports and recreation but rarely for crime--Switzerland has one of the lowest gun murder rates in the world.

Lived in Ontario (28 years), Brisbane, Australia (5 years), Alberta (7 years), and now Texas (14 years).

Agree with pretty much with Boneremake on Alberta, gets more points than Ontario. My Australian experience was good, in both the city and rural (blew an eardrum due to infection in Longreach QLD at Xmas... the doctor was drunk when they wheeled him into emerg, but he was a gentle, caring drunk).

Small things in Ontario are manageable - anything requiring stuff beyond typical emergency room patching up in more rural locations (my definition - anywhere far enough from Toronto that you can't see the nighttime glow, so north of Newfenmarket sort of) is quite lacking (v. long wait times for things like weekly dialysis, MRI, even open MRI, GI tract scoping, ultrasounds, contrast X-rays etc). Parental unit #1 with diabetes requiring 3 times a week dialysis almost snuffed it as there were only 4 chairs in the unit 14 miles from home, got on the list and had to wait for someone to die before getting on the team. Finally snuffed it when they shut down these 4 chairs and the new unit was now a 90 mile round trip 3 times a week for man who could barely walk or see. Died from exhaustion, not diabetes. 2nd parental unit needs an MRI for some serious GI issues, can't keep food down, losing weight rapidly. Wait 4.5 months and we'll see if we can get you in. I'm having her measured for the box.

Having said that, the situation is easier to describe in Texas, the land of excess (excessive wealth and excessive poverty).

Good health insurance plan, preferably through employer with lots of employees = wait times for advanced procedures measured usually in minutes or hours, sometimes days, but not weeks or months. You get taken care of, and your birthing room at the local maternity ward looks like the Marriott (just Couryard though, so no mini-bar or microwave).

Mediocre or no health insurance plan = pray you never get sick enough to require more than what you can buy at the CVS or splint up by watching do-it-yourself first aid videos on youtube, because an unplanned night in the hospital or a trip to emerg in the short bus with swirly lights followed by admission can, for many, wipe them out or sure eat up Bobby's college fund. No exaggeration. I have insurance, but for a reference point, one night in hospital (elective) for a turbinectomy (google it people) including jello and ice cream came in at $14,635. Yes, one night. 24 hours. Do the math. An emergency room visit for a forearm cut requiring 13 stitches (and I didn't even bleed on their white sheets - just cut through the skin to the fat tissue) was billed at $2,300 bucks. Our new baby tried to exit the meatbag as a footling breach, so emergency C-sectioned him out, and one extra night in hospital (2 in total) - all up, billed at just shy of $24K. We now have 3 full service hospitals within 5 miles of our house, and a full service children's hospital in the same radius. And they just started building another. Somebody's making money. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance is shitty (huge deductibles, huge copays) you will eat much of these types of costs. Rule: cheaper to die than get sick.

Ontario and AB might have longer wait times, but even an 83 year old woman in a rural Ontario village with no pension, insurance, income or large stacks of cash can (eventually) get the health care she needs without spending unjustifiable amounts of money. Happy birthday mom.

My 2¢

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Same problem here. Small villages in the middle of the desert want their fiber. Does seem to be driving more people into the cities too. Though in Australia, they're trying to encourage people to populate small rural towns so they don't die out - fiber + cheap cost of living would almost be enough for me. If it wasn't in the middle of the damn desert.

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Speaking of Alaskan telecom - I found this interesting:
http://consumerist.com/2014/02/14/data-caps-are-the-devil-for-residents-of-rural-alaskan-towns-are-they-in-our-future/

In a society where you expect the children to never leave their home communities and where their future education and job are predestined by where they live, that might make sense. I don't want that kind of stratification. That opens up situations where Bible belter children are never exposed to evolution (for an easy target), or where some district just up and decided that heck, their kids never need to learn long division.

The ideal is a society that's much more fluid than that, and the reality is that this is a world where not only are the children from rural Arkansas going to be competing with the ones from NYC for colleges and jobs, but with people from all over the world. Kids can already be extremely hampered just because of where they went to school, which is what the CC (I'm assuming good intentions) was supposed to help. Obviously it is not doing a good job, but I think it's a matter of implementation rather than the idea itself.

An American watching this psa there kiwi, one that actually drives his car and pays fucking attention to the road and the creatures on it who could give a fuck about the moment, is that both of these dimwits had they been in the U.S., would have been on their motherfucking cellphones with masturbatory thumbs ushering them into the next world.

Nearly involved in a 4-car-collison today, mid-afternoon here in Texas (Houston has some of the most distracted and retarded drivers on any road) because some dumbshit was on a phone, along with 2 other drivers who barley escaped jacking-off similarly behind the wheel.

This rural situation is a cake-walk here, but dumbasses still manage on unpolluted roads to fly unconscious in a helicopter to hospital.

Legalize GTA-style citizen watches and watch the shit change overnight....

@brycewi19, Yeah well, look where they're at-Smack-dab in the middle of the valley of suffering-The damn native Americans never even stayed there all year! These choads are a sun-starved, rag-tag collection of all the dysfunctional, depressed, and derelicts who fled their home cities all over the country and gravitated towards that vortex.

Lived in PDX, worked in Eugene, Oregon has an over-abundance of America's flotsam and jetsam and continually too-stoned-for-their-own-good, hipster flakes and in the rural areas, a certain brand of redneck that makes Texas' seem tame!

Even black folks are afraid of the place! Pasty White People, EVERYWHERE!
Welcome to Oregon!

Up-vote for first-time embed of svoiperez!

Sorry man. If it makes you feel any better, you can go to any small town in rural Ireland, and you *will* meet this guy.

He'll go for a few pints with you, and then possibly assault you. Or he might decide you're his best mate ever. Or, not infrequently.... both

Just on the off-chance that someone thinks this is real... it's from a comedy mockumentary about small town life in rural Ireland called Hardy Bucks. It's hilarious and, to be fair, it's pretty accurate...

/shameless self related
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Hardy-Bucks

I have mixed feelings regarding cycling enthusiasts. The ones who see the world as a polluted shit-hole because of cars, who dress in biking-gear and ride to work everyday and don't own a car, the SAME people who obsessively recycle their garbage and preach about it to others (as if the world would be a better place if everyone "recycled").

It's THESE insects, OCD, tweakers that I can't stand, self-absorbed, self-righteous gimps on two skinny wheels.

Add to that description the DICKHEADS that preach cycling-over-automobiles who intentionally stick their ass in the center of the road while conducting traffic and talking smack to drivers sharing the road with Professor Suicide??

THOSE motherfuckers, can moisturize my ballsack.

I had an old roommate who died in San Francisco during a Critical Mass ride, the poor fucker got creamed by a truck driver who was ALSO a dickhead, of the opposite persuasion.

I certainly believe that anyone who chooses a bicycle as their only means of transportation who do so in a large cities where the majority of people commute to work from rural areas in cars everyday, have a fucking death wish.
San Fran, NYC, Chicago, Philly?? No problem. Any city where cyclists are not very prevalent on the roadways, yer an idiot plain and simple.

There's a huge difference between urban and rural dialect, particularity in the mid-west that isn't reflected in this video. Some of these examples emphasize stereotypes that are actually in the minority. Fun none the less though.

Can you point me towards a comparable situation? I can't recall a situation where he was making an emotional plea about an important topic and was ripped for his usual stutter. People like Jon Stewart pick their spots. Comedy is about timing.

I'm not saying you can't get your digs in. I'm saying there's a time and place. Shannon Sharpe's speech impediments and questionable word choice are widely joked about:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/cbs-producers-ask-shannon-sharpe-to-use-at-least-3,7044/

That doesn't bother me. He's plenty self deprecating about his "book smahts." My issue is with context. 99 percent of the time you could crack these jokes in his face and he'd laugh right along with you. If you did it here, he'd rip you in half. The guy grew up dirt ass poor in rural georgia. He made himself a millionaire. What does he need to do for the peanut gallery to shut the fuck up for 2 minutes while he talks about something important? If he was being granted a shred of respect, they would.