Does America intentionally make nonwhite voters wait in longer lines to cast their ballots, to deliberately disenfranchise them? Or have centuries of white supremacy simply produced persistent across-the-board inequality of resources, which happens to include unequal access to voting machines?

Discovery Communications, owners of popular cable networks like the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, and the Travel Channel, hopes purchasing popular web property HowStuffWorks for $250 million will help it transition to the Web. On the surface, the topical match between the cable net and the website looks like a marriage made in heaven. But while it's true that established media companies have mostly failed at building their own Web sites, there's no guarantee that buying will work out any better. The plan will begin by integrating Discovery video segments into the HowStuffWorks site, followed by producing television content using HowStuffWorks's library of articles. Right, sure, sounds good — but really, how do you mesh "Shark Week" and "Mythbuster" video into HowStuffWorks' wonkery?

The Discovery Channel has purchased How Stuff Works for $250 million. The website has 11 million monthly unique visitors. [WSJ]