scientific particularism

I remember those calls from 'microsoft,' the guy's accent was thick and in the background it sounded like a vast hall of jammering and phones being slammed down, but it has been awhile since I've gotten them.  I regularly get calls from some lawyer about some mythical debt, which I don't know the details of because I never answer the phone unless I happen to be in the kitchen where the phone is and see a familiar number in the little window.  Seems like the people I know do the same thing since they rarely pick up their phone.  Some whole conversations take place with leaving phone messages, which is fine because then you don't  have to waste your valuable time gibberty gabbing about the weather.

Dan Rather is a nice enough guy, wore a suit and his hair was always nicely combed.  Those Texas sayings though were just a little too odd, you got the feeling after awhile that he was making them up, which we, as writers ourselves, should admire, but still, just a little too odd.  And then there was the What's the Frequency Kenneth incident. 

Oh wow, I had thought that the taxi ride and What's the Frequency Kenneth incident  were the same thing but Mr Google sez they were two separate incidents. .In the cab incident , November of 1980 in Chicago,  Rather said the guy was trying to kidnap him, and the cabbie said Dan wouldn't  tell him where to go.  The Frequency incident  was in October of 1986 in New York, and doing my research I see that in 1997 they found the guy.  Well it was all just too weird, and Dan never became the next Walter Cronkite.

There is no scientific particularism.  The laws of gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces have always been the same and they are the same everywhere in the universe.  Of course one is prompted to ask how can they know that.  Maybe Mr Google knows.  I googled how do scientists know that the law of gravity is constant and I didn't find an answer on the first page , but the first item to pop up was titled:

Why do measurements of the gravitational constant vary so much?

What, what the fuck?  This is the way the font came out when I copied and pasted it, and normally I would adjust it, but it does capture my astonishment.  But it turns out that they are not talking about the gravitational constant itself, but the measurement of it, which it turns out is due to a 5.9 year oscillation period in the rotation rate of Earth, and when you account for that everything is fine, just fine and there is no reason for you to rush to the bank and take all your money out.

Although the scientists do not claim to know what causes the G/LOD correlation, they cautiously suggest that the "least unlikely" explanation may involve circulating currents in the Earth's core. The changing currents may modify Earth's rotational inertia, affecting LOD, and be accompanied by density variations, affecting G.

Least unlikely?  I think I will take a cab to the bank and ask the cabbie, whose name will surely be Kenneth, what is the frequency.