leave what I'm working on -> scroll -> scroll -> scroll -> click menu -> run mouse back to window via a lot of scrolling

NeXTSTEP had nice menu that could be detached - it was so easy

That's not what "scrolling" generally means. And if your cursor has a decent acceleration curve applied to it, the potentially long distance to the menu won't matter unless the menu is at least one large monitor away.

and what word would you use?

well, its a tad bit longer than the NeXTSTEP menu near the window and OS X doesn't allow tear-offs. I find it irritating and stupid compared to what NeXT had. There are quite a few things they dropped in the conversion from NeXTSTEP / OpenStep to OS X that I miss.

Which UI rule are you thinking about? Fitts' Law doesn't have anything to do with distance. It might be the case that you have to move your mouse pointer an inconvenient distance to get to the menu bar, but that doesn't change the fact that putting the bar at the top of the screen gives the bar functionally infinite height and makes it easier to accurately point to.

Fitts' Law absolutely does include distance: it's the observation that the time it takes to hit a target increases with increasing distance or decreasing size of target.

Ah, okay. I guess I misremembered it from when I learned it a few years ago. Thanks for clarifying!