That we have come so far in the enterprise of understanding nature, far enough to pry open the nucleus of the atom, to sail through interplanetary space, to lose ourselves in the Internet, and perform medical surgery with laser beams, all of this is cause for great celebration, not fear, and it\'s time we quit hiding all this under the covers and let these people come out of the shadows into the light of day and take accurate stock of their accomplishments and their failures and make an attempt to understand what they do and why they do it... Now the back effect on the populace of feeding the public a skewed view of the scientist and his or her world is sad to contemplate. We\'re living in it right now. Just think how many impressionable young individuals might otherwise have been interested in a life dedicated to scientific pursuit, and they turned away from it because it wasn\'t cool. They saw an off-putting perception of it by watching the movies, and how many brilliant minds which might otherwise have been engaged in breaking new ground in fields in such as physics or chemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and on and on were turned away because they percieved that scientists are not valued, their work is not valued, their work is not considered noble, but instead it\'s nerdy, it\'s uncooth, it\'s socially unacceptable. It\'s a very very sad commentary on the values of our culture when shooting a ball into a basket is more laudable, more praiseworthy, more admirable, and more rewarded than teasing out some fundamental truth about the natural world or finding a cure for AIDS or cancer.

It\'s unfortunate that we live in a society where professional sports are valued over enlightening endeavors.

\"REALITY ENDS HERE.\" IT\'S THE UNOFFICIAL MOTTO OF THE UNIVERSITY OF Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, cast in concrete at the entranceway to the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts and, in Latin, at the South entryway of a new complex building. As scientist-turned-filmmaker and use film school graduate s Randy Olson explained to us, the slogan:

is not a joke. It\'s a bold, challenging statement—r-a basic \"screw you\" to the outside world who thinks that accuracy and reality are important variables in storytelling, when in fact they are the dread enemy of storytelling. No storyteller wants an expert around who will question his premises. It\'s hard enough to tell a story without having some annoying expert sitting there correcting every detail and negating every premise.

Translated for r more literal-minded scientists-who, when they think of Star Wars, think of the impossibility of having fire and loud explosions in space—the motto might be better rendered: Abandon All Accuracy, Ye Who Enter Here.

A saying found at the entrance to a film school puts down science.