Cordesman

I see Anthony Cordesman is mentioned today over on The Corner. I can't think of him--a fairly prominent foreign-affairs talking head, and a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs--without thinking of this:

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AND THE “BUFFY PARADIGM”

It's a 41-page fully-footnoted paper on what we can learn about national security from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Considering it was published September 29, 2001, Cordesman either started this paper as a response to 9/11, or was actually working on it before. Here's a taste:

Any structured intellectual approach to describing this situation – and planning for it -- is so uncertain that a valid structure can only be developed as an exercise in complexity or “chaos” theory. I, however, would like you to think about the biological threat in more mundane terms. I am going to suggest that you think about biological warfare in terms of a TV show called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” that you think about the world of biological weapons in terms of the “Buffy Paradigm,” and that you think about many of the problems in the proposed solutions as part of the “Buffy Syndrome.”

I realize that those of you who are workaholics or who are simply mature and without
children or younger relatives may never have seen this show. It is, however, about a teenage vampire slayer who lives in a world of unpredictable threats where each series of crises only becomes predictable when it is over and is followed by a new and unfamiliar one.

Yes, he actually takes the show and the concept very seriously, and it's actually a pretty good paper.