[frankus]

The author doesn't really address one of the most important mechanisms that human ears use to determine direction: the delay between a sound wave reaching the "near" and "far" ear.

You can try this with headphones, by playing an identical recording in both ears, but delaying one by about 1 millisecond (I set this up back in college on my BeBox).

You'll perceive the sound as coming entirely from the non-delayed ear, at least until you take that side of the headphones off, at which point you can once again perceive that it's also playing in the delayed ear.