Shaq Sites

Aristotle wrote, "No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness." Shaquille O'Neal (below), the self-proclaimed Big Aristotle, expressed vaguely similar sentiments when asked if he'd seen the Parthenon during a visit to Greece. "I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to," he replied.

With the philosopher-center's return to the NBA Finals, we were inspired to check out a sliver of his vast Web presence (according to the Google search engine, "about 131,000 mentions"). Our first stop was Shaq World (shaq.com), the big man's official site. Easy to navigate, it provides stats, photos, news, an audio-video clips section, a chat room (sample posting: SHAQ IS SOOOOO HOTTTTTT!!!!) and archived chat transcripts.

We then tapped into Shaq Universe (jps.net/bcolditz), a mostly fawning fan site. Our favorite area was the media section, offering this (unsubstantiated) scoop: " Shaq and his flashy teammate Kobe Bryant are teaming up in a future movie. I do not have any details as to what the name of the movie is, or what it is about, but I am sure it will not be too good."

Next we tried Google's translation service on an outdated Italian section of sports.com. Under the headline SHAQ DRAGS THE LAKERS, we learned that "the O'Neal has condemned Utah to the left quarter defeat in six" and "played to the large one in spite of the heaviest absences of Kobe Bryant and Ron Harper." Needless to say, we're now big fans of Google's translation service.

Our final stop was the SHAQ Cares site (front.csulb.edu/success/shaqcares.htm), but instead of a 7'1" center, we found the Success and Happiness Attributes Questionnaire (SHAQ). If only we could see Big Aristotle's answers.