A collection of offbeat and entertaining primarily non-technical essays on physics and those who practice it, from well-known theoretical physicist N. David Mermin. Bringing together for the first time thirty columns published in Physics Today's Reference Frame series from 1988 to 2009, along with updating commentary, this humorous and original volume also includes thirteen new essays, many of them previously unpublished. Mermin's lively and penetrating writing illuminates a broad range of topics, from the implications of bad spelling in a major science journal, the crises of science libraries and scientific periodicals and the folly of scientific prizes and honors, to the agony of getting funding and how to pronounce 'quark'. His witty observations and insightful anecdotes gleaned from a lifetime in science will appeal to physicists at all levels as well as anyone with an interest in science or scientists at the turn of the twenty-first century.