Word: moloch
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...heart of things: at sea, the white whale, Moby Dick, would serve the purpose. Around his home in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, Melville had to strain himself to turn a locomotive into a dark metaphysic: "Hark! here comes that old dragon again--that gigantic gad-fly of a Moloch--snort! puff! scream!" "Great improvements of the age!" he wrote contemptuously. "Who wants to travel so fast? My grandfather did not, and he was no fool." Earlier in the 19th century, there were those who thought that traveling faster than 20 m.p.h. would cause insanity...