Profile

My sister, Martha, and me, a while ago.

1. I live in Guadalajara, Mexico and have done so since childhood though I was born elsewhere.
2. I’ve been around a lot of Mexico, sometimes on extended family roadtrips; sometimes with my dad, who works all across the country; and once, to Guanajuato, for college. Abroad, I’ve only been to the US and, briefly, to Canada. The US I know quite a bit and has always felt home to me.
3. I’m a child of the web.
4. I belong to the translucent generation.
5. I have a good old bunch of photos on Flickr, an old bunch of links at Del.icio.us, and a good, frequently-updated bunch of books at my Amazon wish list.
6. I leave comments scattered here and there all over the web. I’m trying to keep track of them in this cameo list.
7. I once went to the 2005 Fall Startup School, had a blast, and made some fascinating friends there I still keep in touch with. I wrote a travelog, Gravity Overcome (in Spanish despite the title), about the whole experience, which involved an Esperanto gathering, Boston, an Edward Tufte course, and a couple of NY weeks.
8. I’m a format freak. I bold and italicize and hyperlink and fiddle until I’m too tired to write. It’s probably just part of my OCD (like how I can’t stand an open drawer or closet).
9. An elementary school teacher once told me I had a talent for highlighting. I’ve always obsessed about it since. I’m big into information design, which I conceive as mostly knowing how to highlight.
10. I love English. These last 3 years, in which I’ve been out of school trying to learn all I can, it has become my language—practically everything I want to read these days is in English and most people with whom I care to talk understand the language. I think in it these days (the other day I surprised myself by counting in it) and if you understand it however faintly I’ll probably talk to you in it regardless of your native language, unless you tell me otherwise.
11. My favorite language so far, though, is Esperanto. No other language feels more like home.
12. I don’t believe in gods nor absolute authorities. I dislike and distrust, intensely, religions and governments.
13. I consider religiosity at best a character flaw, and not a minor one. It means you either won’t, or can’t, or daren’t think honestly about your life.
14. “I have weighed the evidence as best I can, and I do not believe the universe to be evil, a reply which in these days is called atheism.”
15. I believe in free markets.
16. I’m big into economics.
17. Morally and politically I’m a libertarian, economically I’m an anarchocapitalist.
18. Full name’s Eliazar Parra Cardenas. I sometimes go by char, zeppe, elzr, and, lately, ely.
19. I’m not a quick thinker, I’m an obsesive ruminant instead.
20. I’m the biggest bookworm. If you ever meet me you’ll probably walk away with several books you have to read.
21. I’m a formist. Math and language have always come easily to me. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style is my idea of fun.
22. I’ve always been a big listmaker but lately, it has become a serious addiction. Some examples: exotic names, favorite words, fascinating things about the English language, nicknames for Google, little ideas, a jew list... I’ve list incubators, showcasing lists for the many things I like, list of favorite songs (1200+)... Damn, I made this personal intro a list and even gave the blog itself one. It suits my ruminative nature to let thought sediment in them and it’s a great pleasure to gradually compile them, like solving a puzzle or collecting butterflies—Lexicographers must have the best of times…
23. I mostly read nonfiction. When I’m not, I mostly read science fiction, which is the genre that has always felt home to me. I treasure scifi for both it’s sense of wonder (sensawunda) and its sense of could, both topics I must write about someday… Some of my favorite, most important books ever, belong to the genre: Greg Egan’s Schild’s Ladder, Charles Stross’s Accelerando, John Varley’s Persistence of Vision, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation.