Is there still a market for live classical music in the U.S.? Many symphony orchestras, once well-funded and well-attended sources of civic pride in towns and cities across the country, are finding themselves in crisis.

 

Some orchestras are simply fading away. Last week, after 30 years of performances, Georgia's Gainesville Symphony Orchestra (GSO) announced it was ending its operations due to drastically reduced donations and a lack of community interest.

 

"This is a sad day, indeed," Vanessa Hyatt, the symphony's vice president, told the Gainesville Times. "We made every effort to save the GSO. But in the end, we did not have enough public support to save it."

 

Others are struggling to survive. 

 

If actor Gerard Depardieu's retreat to Belgium didn't stir passions about France's forthcoming tax hike on the rich, perhaps its effect on the nation's soccer clubs will.

 

Paris Saint-Germain is the richest soccer club in France and has a team apparel and souvenir store along Paris' Champs Élysées. Its ownership group is based in Qatar, and its roster includes English icon David Beckham (pictured) and Swedish star Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It is also, according to Bloomberg, directly in the crosshairs of France's new tax plan that applies a 75% surcharge to salaries above 1 million euros.

 

After weeks of unclear answers when questioned about the tax's effect on professional sports teams, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s office issued a statement on Tuesday confirming that the surcharge will apply to soccer clubs including PSG.

 

When talking to The New York Times about what could be America's next big alternative fuel source, Erin Fitzgerald of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy was as diplomatic about the touchy subject as a spokesperson can be: 

"It's not glamorous. It doesn't really catch your eye like wind and solar."

Those are likely the most charitable two sentences about fecal matter ever spoken. Fitzgerald is talking about manure, which is now being processed into a natural gas source with enough power to run milking equipment for 30,000 cows, 42 tractor-trailers, 10 barns, a cheese factory, a cafe, a gift shop, a dairy museum and a movie theater at Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana.

 

For more than six decades, residents of Philadelphia's Wyomissing neighborhood only associated Chink's Steaks with one thing: the artery-clogging sandwiches made famous by the City of Brotherly Love. 

 

Then in 2004, an Asian-American student complained to owner Joe Groh that the name was offensive. Nine years later, Groh decided the time had come to change it.

As The Philadelphia Inquirer and other local media organizations reported, Chink's is changing its name to Joe's Steak and Soda Shop. Some of the restaurant's customers are not pleased with the change, accusing Groh of caving to political correctness. About 10,000 of them signed a petition urging Groh to keep the Chink's name. 

 

The tough economy and high cost of tuition have some teens and their parents questioning the value of a college education. Is it worth it to incur that kind of debt? Is the payoff still there?

The answer seems to be yes. New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that college-educated Americans earned about $11,749 in the last three months of 2011, according to The Wall Street Journal. Those with a post-graduate degree earned a median $15,733 in the same period.

The average high-school dropout, however, earned only $4,026.

And those with college educations were more likely to have jobs. College-educated Americans have an unemployment rate of 3.8%. 

No one would blink if a mom advised her children to marry their intellectual equals. But when a mom takes that advice, applies a 1960s-era veneer and tells college women to "find a husband on campus," there's hell to pay.

That's exactly what happened to Susan Patton, the so-called Princeton Mom whose letter was published Friday in The Daily Princetonian, the university's campus newspaper. At its heart, the letter makes sense: Ladies of Princeton, you're smart and will want mates who are just as smart. You will never again be around such a high concentration of smart men. 

Barbie has been a busy achiever since she was first introduced in 1959. 

The Mattel (MAT) doll has held more than 130 careers, ranging from 1993's "Army Ranger" to 2004's "Presidential Candidate." 

But today, certain career Barbies are fetching higher prices than others, and there isn't always a strong correlation with real-world earnings, according to the Economist. 

For instance, the most expensive doll is now Snowboarder Barbie, which costs about $30, more than double the price of "nurse" Barbie. 

While top competitive snowboarders certainly can earn a tidy sum -- Olympic champion Torah Bright was listed in 2011 as among the top-earning skiers and snowboarders -- most would probably categorize the profession under "slacker."

 

While working as a city bureaucrat might not have many perks, it's always had one guarantee: a nice pension. 

But a federal judge's ruling Monday that allowed bankrupt Stockton, Calif., to restructure its finances may weaken that once-untouchable pension check. 

That's because the ruling signals the city might have to cut payments, The Wall Street Journal reports. The decision also sets precedent for other cities, raising concerns that the country's once-inviolable pension funds could find their protections weakened. 

Stockton, a city of 300,000, is deep in the hole because of its pension obligations. It owes $900 million to the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, to cover pension guarantees, according to The Associated Press. That makes CalPERS the city's biggest financial obligation.