 | This is the soon to vanish corpse of a deleted translation into English of zh:積丹尼 that I attempted to do, but instead ended up having to prove how notable I am. I will leave that job to others for now on! Jidanni 00:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC) |
Daniel Jacobson | |
|---|---|
 Jacobson at Wikimania 2007 | |
| Born | December 16, 1960 |
| Occupation(s) | subsistence farmer, intellectual, volunteer |
| Spouse | DENG Yingyu (鄧盈玉) |
| Children | none |
| Website | http://jidanni.org/ |
Dan Jacobson (simplified Chinese: 积丹尼; traditional Chinese: 積丹尼; pinyin: Jī Dānní), born 1960, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, moved in 1965 with his parents to Evanston, Illinois, where he attended the Free School of Evanston and also received a Bachelor's Degree in Geology and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University, at minimal tuition as his father worked in the library. In 1977 he lived on The Farm (Tennessee).[1]
He worked for a mere three years in Bell Labs, Naperville, Illinois, when in 1991 on a visit to Taiwan he met a local woman, remarrying and moving to the island, where he is now a permanent resident and a member of the expatriate community, with occasional press attention,[2] despite 24°10′54″N 120°51′58″E / 24.18170479°N 120.86603958°E location on a remote hilltop due to his fear of noise, where he maintains subsistence agriculture amid a hectare of Taiwan subtropical evergreen forest.[3]
Actions
editOver the years Jacobson has occasionally drawn attention:
- Promoting Hanyu Pinyin over the Democratic Progressive Party's Tongyong Pinyin.[4]
- Promoting the use of the Taiwan Power Company's pole coordinates as a "poorman's GPS". These were then incorporated into maps by e.g., Sunriver, who now informally feature Jacobson on their maps and website.[5]
- Promoting house number planning amongst local governments.[6]
- Discovering the reversal of the globe on the 1999 version of the NT$1000 bill. Despite denials, the image was replaced in the 2004 reissue.[7]
- The Highway System in Taiwan adopted Jacobson's suggestions
- Integrated formerly all-female toll collector hiring
- Replaced reoccurring e.g., 0.8 fractional kilometer posts with their full versions: 169.8
- Replaced the 1/2 half kilometer posts on the provincial highways expressways with their full versions: 37.5
In 2007 Jacobson became focused on rescinding Article 9 of the Nationality Law of the Republic of China, so immigrants to Taiwan such as himself can keep their original nationality.[8]
Comments
editRichard Stallman notes Jacobson is "much more unusual" than Stallman.[9]
External links
editReferences
edit- ^ http://jidanni.org/me/
- ^ http://jidanni.org/me/media.html
- ^ http://jidanni.org/location/
- ^ http://jidanni.org/lang/pinyin/older.html (first image is newspaper front page), more scans
- ^ http://jidanni.org/geo/taipower/
- ^ http://jidanni.org/geo/house_numbering/
- ^ http://jidanni.org/geo/nt1000/
- ^ Not allowed to be Taiwanese
- ^ http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/entry-20050712.html