"I'm still here. Sort of." : Constructed Identities in Paul Auster's City of Glass

Paul Auster’s City of Glass contains a jumble of identities. In fact, the identities are more numerous than the characters, and consequently, characters have several different identities. Some of these identities are obvious constructs, but with others the degree of construction is less evident. Poststructuralist theory, however, puts forward the idea that these seemingly original identities are in fact constructs to the same level as all others. Thus, this essay argues that there are no original identities; identities are constructed by outer factors. This essay discusses three outer factors contributing to the construction of identities, factors commonly discussed in poststructuralist criticism, these three being language, cultural codes and chance.

An Analysis of the Telecommunications Business in China by Linear Regression

In this paper, we study the influence of the National Telecom Business Volume by the data in 2008 that have been published in China Statistical Yearbook of Statistics. We illustrate the procedure of modeling “National Telecom Business Volume” on the following eight variables, GDP, Consumption Levels, Retail Sales of Social Consumer Goods Total Renovation Investment, the Local Telephone Exchange Capacity, Mobile Telephone Exchange Capacity, Mobile Phone End Users, and the Local Telephone End Users. The testing of heteroscedasticity and multicollinearity for model evaluation is included. We also consider AIC and BIC criterion to select independent variables, and conclude the result of the factors which are the optimal regression model for the amount of telecommunications business and the relation between independent variables and dependent variable. Based on the final results, we propose several recommendations about how to improve telecommunication services and promote the economic development.