The winners and the losers

• Winner: Springtime in Utah can be wild, but if you find yourself getting swept away by an avalanche that hit your car, it helps a lot to be armed with two things — seat belts and a sense of humor. The Thomas family of St. Louis had both Thursday when they were carried off by a 100-yard wide wall of snow. So did the two teenage ski-resort employees they had riding with them. Thanks to the seat belts, they all could walk away. And thanks to the sense of humor, Michael Thomas could sum up the experience with the state's new two-word slogan, "Life elevated."

• Loser: College students are like a lot of people. They haven't learned that what goes on the Internet, stays on the Internet. A news story this week told of how students are using a Web site called Facebook.com to post compromising photos and stories of themselves. These are private jokes meant for their friends to see.

But the Internet isn't a little afternoon get-together in someone's living room. The photos and stories will remain where they can be copied and downloaded, and where they can surface again at just the wrong time.

• Loser: Limestone from Israel isn't everything it's cracked up to be. It is, however, good at cracking up. Utah's brutal winters have been too much for the limestone pavement at the Salt Lake City Main Library downtown. The good news is the folks who built the library will have to pay to replace the stones, so taxpayers won't be bothered. Word is the new pavement can be taken for granite.