Transsexuals were a hot topic this week—follow the Fray Notes links to find out what "only on the Fray would you read this" referred to. And the Oscar Frays were predictably busy: from a distinguished scholar's input on John Nash (below), to wide-ranging comment on the awards show that went along with David Edelstein and Lynda Obst's wide-ranging "Dialogue."

Subject: Marriage for All
Re: "Frame Game: Transsexuality on Trial"
From: Marylb
Date: Thu Mar 21 10:10 a.m. PT

Who or what you identify with sexually or otherwise does not turn you into the identity. Yes, if you love dogs you can have puppy ears attached, but will that make you a dog? Yes, if you are a pedophile you can get a facelift and say you are 15, but does that make you a teen-ager? ... My sympathy is with the alternate-gender identification person, but that is where it ends until we determine marriage to be legal for all gay persons rather than simply one portion excluded by contortion. Marriage or non-marriage for all seems a better way of facing this issue.

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Subject: The Importance of Husbands
Re:  "Assessment: The Politician's Wife"
From: Ender
Date: Fri Mar 22 10:07 a.m. PT

The formula for the first woman president [includes]: a first gentleman who is a known factor. People can accept that a husband can keep his wife's counsel in perspective but assume that women will give more weight to her husband's counsel. In other words, people will vote for a man who has a wife that doesn't necessarily inspire confidence outside of a first lady's traditional role. They will not vote for a woman whose husband they don't think could handle the job of president.

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Subject: A Beautiful Achievement
Re: "The Earthling: Nash Equilibrium"
From: Norman Levitt, professor of mathematics, Rutgers University
Date: Mon Mar 25  6:50 a.m. PT

[John] Nash's stellar reputation among mathematicians does not center on the game theory work. …Other work of Nash's is much more important and striking. In particular, he is best known as the creator of the Isometric Embedding Theorem, which shows that arbitrary Riemannian manifolds can be realized, metrically, as submanifolds of Euclidean space. This is a fundamental result in differential geometry, a field far removed from game theory. The Nobel hardly makes up for the fact that Nash was denied a Fields Medal for this work—in retrospect, a defective judgment. The excessive emphasis on the game-theory paper is one of the ironies of Nash's sudden celebrity.

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