Remember the mid-'90s? Come on, it wasn't all that long ago.
A lot of Big Things have come -- and gone -- since then: Monica Lewinsky, the dot-com bubble, the rise and fall of Enron. Other big changes have been more permanent: three huge, expensive sports palaces built by Houston taxpayers; a quantum leap in the hassles of taking a commercial flight; a huge crater in the ground where the country's two tallest buildings once stood.
A lot of changes, though, have been subtler -- our air is cleaner, if statistics can be believed; our current computers would have dazzled even a hard-core techie back then; we're surrounded by more and more -- and ever larger -- SUVs and monster trucks.
There's no one way to sum up the zeitgeist of any given time, of course, but we arbitrarily picked 1996 and took a look at a varied bunch of categories, comparing them to the present day. This, then, is how they've changed from the days of "911 Is a Joke" to when 9/11 is a pretext for war.
| Category |
1996 |
2002-3 |
|
Number of jobless nationally
In Houston
|
7.3 million
100,000
|
8.6 million
129,000
|
Defense budget
(not including any Iraq war) |
$266 billion |
$369 billion |
| Barrel of oil |
$26.80 |
$33.91 |
| Hot reality-TV show |
Rescue 411 |
Joe Millionaire |
| What Ozzy was up to |
Starting the soon-defunct Ozz records |
Being a cultural icon |
| Stock price for Northrop Grumman (defense contractor) |
High for 1996: 84.25 |
High for 2002: 135.00 |
| Stock price for American Airlines |
Low for 1996: 74.88 |
Low for 2002: 3.01 |
| Average appraised value of a Harris County home |
$77,713 |
$119,183 |
| Avg. property tax bill |
$1,580 |
$2,695 |
| Americans “not at all worried” they or a relative will be a terrorist victim |
27 percent |
24 percent |
|
Americans who use a computer at least “occasionally”
Of those, the percentage who go online
|
59 percent
21 percent
|
74 percent
66 percent
|
| Typical computer |
133 megahertz processor, 1 gigabyte hard drive, 32 megabytes RAM, $2,000 |
2,350 megahertz, 80 gigabyte hard drive, 512 megabytes RAM, $1,250 |
| Hot SUV |
Ford Expedition (14 mpg city/20 hwy) |
Hummer 2 (8 mpg city/10 hwy) |
| New SUVs/trucks sold in Harris County |
92,500 (42% of total vehicles sold) |
143,500 (53% of total) |
| Presidents/VPs who ducked Vietnam service |
1 |
2 |
| Music cassettes sold in the United States |
101.9 million |
16.7 million |
| Pirated CDs seized (CD-Rs) |
87 (January-June 1997) |
2.8 million |
| Houston’s home fields |
Oilers: Astrodome
Astros: Astrodome
Rockets: The Summit |
Texans: Reliant Stadium
Astros: Minute Maid Park (née Enron Field)
Rockets: Your-Name-Here Arena (in Oct.) |
| Congressional bills dealing with “profiling” |
15 |
155 |
| Wiretaps approved by state courts |
568 |
1005 (in 2001) |
| Starbucks stores in the United States |
1,015 |
5,886 |
| Carcinogens released into Houston’s air |
3.9 million pounds |
2.8 million pounds |
| Days the Houston area exceeded federal ozone pollution standards |
28 |
26 |
| Harris County’s State House delegation |
14 Democrats, 11 Republicans |
11 Democrats, 14 Republicans |
Top box office hits
(third January weekend) |
1) From Dusk Till Dawn
2) Mr. Holland’s Opus
3) 12 Monkeys |
1) Kangaroo Jack
2) National Security
3) Just Married |
