EARTH360

News: This website features articles and designs I've created from 1990 to the present. Additional pieces currently hosted on other platforms will soon be transferred here, along with many new works in preparation.
[My Facebook account was hacked on January 1, 2024. I am currently working with the Illinois Attorney General’s office to recover the account.]

I am an independent scholar, autodidactic polymath, author, and educator. Scholars and scientists, including Nobel Prize winner Sir Harry Kroto, philosopher Daniel Dennett, author Martin Gardner, biologist Lynn Margulis, science writer and skeptic Michael Shermer, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, and environmental scientist James Lovelock, have praised or commented on my work. One of my notable books is The (Human) Invention of God: The Natural Origins of Mythology and Religion. Here’s what some reviewers have said:

I am currently working on several books and manuscripts , some of which you can link to:
"Tommy Turtle at the Rabbit School" a STEM children's book series
"Case Study: Plato's Atlantis Through a Geological Lens"
"Atoms and Souls: The Prehistoric Origins of Science and Religion"
"Autism: A Novel Environmental Hypothesis"
"Genius Nation: My Educational Odyssey"
"Machines that Dream: Artificial Intelligence through Biomimic Forced Compression."

Sir Harry Kroto invited me to present my models at the first international interdisciplinary conference on Carbon-60 in 1994.  I have also designed a modern-day Stonehenge, called SpaceHenge and authored a paper explaining geodesic domes. Currently, I serve as an advisor to the Lifeboat Foundation. As a competitive swimmer, I was ranked 25th globally at age 16.

I graduated with distinction from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs where I was named Outstanding Graduate in both Behavioral Sciences and Philosophy. One of my advisors at the Air Force Academy was Roger Bate, co-author of the classic astrodynamics textbook, who inspired my interest in computer science and AI. I later earned a master's degree from Purdue in Industrial and Organizational Psychology specializing in Human Factors (Usability) Engineering. My classmate at the Air Force Academy and at Purdue was Captain Sully Sullenberger.

During my Air Force service, I lectured at the Test Pilot School on information overload and collected data from test pilots for research. However, due to my views on the Vietnam War, I left the Air Force as a conscientious objector.

From 1975-1985, I was associated with the Church of Scientology, serving as a staff member from 1977-1980. During this period, I worked various jobs to support myself, including selling artwork door-to-door, delivering newspapers, and even sleeping in my van in the church parking lot for the first two months.

After leaving staff in 1980, I worked in numerous roles: lifeguard, swim instructor and coach, substitute teacher, machine press operator, sprout packer, box shipper, truck driver, furniture mover, door-to-door sales, telephone solicitor, and summer camp counselor/bus driver. This diverse experience provided valuable insights into different aspects of society and human nature, as well as organizational structures and functions.

From 1982 through the 1990s, I taught primarily ethnic minorities and economically disadvantaged students as both a substitute and long-term substitute in the inner city of Los Angeles, including South-Central LA and East LA. During this period, I used my evenings to explore various scientific subjects, and wrote extensively. I also visited three active volcanoes, research which led to my first book on the natural origins of mythology and religion. I used my computer programming skills to study highly composite numbers and I wrote a notable paper about them.

In the 2000s I taught at Otis College of Art and Design (Mathematics for Artists), at Los Angeles City College (Introduction to Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Critical Thinking) at Johns Hopkins University, Center for Talented Youth (Cognitive Psychology), and at Columbia College Hollywood (Science for Film-Makers).

In the late 2000s, when I was back substitute teaching, the Great Recession began. New teachers were being laid off and they were being given the substitute teaching jobs. All of us substitute teachers were getting very little work. At first, I had to spend my evenings refreshing the substitute teacher webpage to try to grab a job when it came online. So I developed a web robot to find jobs and click on them, and I was again getting sufficient work. When the school district's system engineers found I was somehow searching for a job every three seconds, all night long, they copied my webot idea and sold it to all the sub teachers. After that, facing imminent homelessness, in the fall of 2010, I left for a teaching job in China.

I taught for 8 years at a prestigious national university, Xiamen University. I taught Spoken English in the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures and also collaborated with the Brain-Like Intelligence Systems Lab and the Multi-Media Lab (editing papers and making suggestions). In my free time, I studied Chinese language, geography, history, and philosophy.

Thanks to all my substitute teaching experience, I have taught at 116 different schools, colleges and universities, in every grade from kindergarten through university, perhaps becoming (somewhat inadvertently) one of the world's most experienced educators with some unique insights into this field.

My current interests are cognitive science, AI, STEM education, and political science. More about Bill

Myself and philosopher Daniel Dennett discussing my first book in August, 2011, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dennett later invited me to an online group of scholars studying evolution and religion and posted that "Lauritzen has some interesting ideas..."