I heard an ambulance off in the distance as I was driving to work earlier today, and started thinking about the evolution of our five senses. In particular, I think hearing is quite impressive, and often taken for granted. Consider that we as animals have the ability to detect and roughly pinpoint, in three-dimensional space, the location of an event occurring a great distance away and outside of our visual range, entirely by perceiving vibrations in the air. Not only that, but we are also able to deftly isolate specific auditory events from a cacophony of sounds, still isolating both the content and location. That means, given a torrent of vibrating air hitting our ears, we can separate out specific voices and sounds, figure out where each one is and specifically listen to one of them... That's pretty cool. Just saying.

~~ Alex