Friday, April 27, 2007
Soon I will use this site to post MPEG4 AVC and WMV videos to illustrate nature, travel, and sports highlights shot with my Panasonic HDC-SD1 and Sony H1. The image quality will be some compromise between 1080i and the 320 x 240 small image size limit allowed by most web video. Sound mixing turns out to be a major challenge of producing videos that are any good. Large HD AVC files, which eat up 25MB / minute even in "extended play" qualify, also push the limits of NERO 7 editing software and a 2003 vintage VAIO with only 512MB RAM and 2.1 MHZ.
Labels: Coming Soon
# posted by John Koch @ 7:27 AM 
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John~
I wanted to reply to your comment regarding my comment (?) on Juan Cole's blog, and I didn't feel like doing it publicly.
Your response was intelligent and articulate, but I still disagree with you. Your statement to the effect that the work is tedious and unoriginal, biased to a certain country, reinforces my original point that being a CIA analyst, especially in the Middle East division, is a cush-job. The pay may not be great, but as an unemployed Middle East expert, it's better than the alternative. As long as you walk the obvious party line, you're set-up in a relatively comfortable position that is, at least, semi-engaging.
I don't know too much about the operations side of the equation (Weiner's new book on the CIA is next on my list), but I know that outside of a few exceptionally dangerous countries, ousted agents, be they ousted by bad luck or incompetence, are usually held persona-non-grata and given a one-way ticket to the nearest embassy. Granted, it has to be humiliating, but far better than the consequences of failure as a Marine.
I cannot speak personally about the career prospects of ex-agents and analysts, but I have to imagine that being "ex-CIA" has enough cachet to land something. Your point about a native Arabic speaker's prospect being dim is well-taken, though, as I know from experience, that bias is not limited to just native speakers. I failed a security exam on account of my extensive foreign travel in the Middle East, all in an attempt to master that impossibly hard language.
Patrick
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I wanted to reply to your comment regarding my comment (?) on Juan Cole's blog, and I didn't feel like doing it publicly.
Your response was intelligent and articulate, but I still disagree with you. Your statement to the effect that the work is tedious and unoriginal, biased to a certain country, reinforces my original point that being a CIA analyst, especially in the Middle East division, is a cush-job. The pay may not be great, but as an unemployed Middle East expert, it's better than the alternative. As long as you walk the obvious party line, you're set-up in a relatively comfortable position that is, at least, semi-engaging.
I don't know too much about the operations side of the equation (Weiner's new book on the CIA is next on my list), but I know that outside of a few exceptionally dangerous countries, ousted agents, be they ousted by bad luck or incompetence, are usually held persona-non-grata and given a one-way ticket to the nearest embassy. Granted, it has to be humiliating, but far better than the consequences of failure as a Marine.
I cannot speak personally about the career prospects of ex-agents and analysts, but I have to imagine that being "ex-CIA" has enough cachet to land something. Your point about a native Arabic speaker's prospect being dim is well-taken, though, as I know from experience, that bias is not limited to just native speakers. I failed a security exam on account of my extensive foreign travel in the Middle East, all in an attempt to master that impossibly hard language.
Patrick
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