It was sweltering inside the nightclub where Alexander was DJing, in the US state of Virginia. Though it was more than 40°C outside, the club’s air conditioning was broken. It felt extra sticky and humid because the club was hosting a special event: a Pokemon-themed foam party, where upwards of 400 clubbers were frolicking in suds.

When employees are treated as short-term assets, they reinvent themselves as marketable goods, always ready to quit. By Ilana Gershon.

With the recession still prevalent in students’ minds, arts degrees are receiving fewer applicants while science, business and IT soar in numbers. People may have a love for poetry, novels, and plays, but there remains an ever-present fear of completing a degree that will result in unemployment. Parents recommend studying for a ‘serious’ degree and as a result students are often too afraid to follow their dreams when it comes to selecting a college course. After all, is university not the first step on the path most people follow when deciding on a career?

Sixty per cent of Australian students are training for jobs that will not exist in the future or will be transformed by automation, according to a new report by the Foundation for Young Australians. The not-for-profit group, which works with young Australians to create social change, says the national curriculum is stuck in the past and digital literacy, in particular, needs to be boosted.

Imagine, for a second, a modern private-detective movie. A weeping wife is seated in the smoky, wood-paneled office of Skip Tracer, private investigator and overwrought cliché. She suspects that her husband is having an affair and wants Skip to tail him. He agrees, shakes on it, then cruises hubby’s Facebook profile to find that — quite by accident, being both a rookie adulterer and lousy with his iPhone settings...

Fred Cook, the CEO of PR juggernaut Golin Harris, has worked with Jeff Bezos, Michael Eisner, and Steve Jobs. You would expect him to have attended the best schools, gotten the best grades, and racked up marketable skills before he could legally vote.