Thinking about it I would guess that the kissing number covered in the article is quite similar to the concept of near orthogonality.
Indeed I believe that you can redefine the n-th kissing number as: the maximum number of points on a (n-1)-sphere such that for no pair of points the angle between the center and themselves is less than 60°
Indeed I believe that you can redefine the n-th kissing number as: the maximum number of points on a (n-1)-sphere such that for no pair of points the angle between the center and themselves is less than 60°