Year in which Mikey Havoc and Newsboy called Gore the gayest town in New Zealand: 1999

Number of openly gay couples actually living in Gore, the least gay town in New Zealand: 3

Number of same sex couples living together openly in the gayest city in New Zealand, Auckland: 1300

Percentage of all couples living together in New Zealand who are homosexual: 1

Year in which a medical dictionary defined heterosexuality as an abnormal or perverted appetite for the opposite sex: 1901

Year in which the New York Times first reported a rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals: 1981

Chance that a person who has died of AIDS since then has died in sub-Saharan Africa: 4 in 5

Percentage by which a man’s chances of being gay increase for every older brother he has: 33

Number of years that Osama bin Laden’s half-brother owned the Houston Gulf Airport before his death in 1988: 6

Number of years since then that the airport has been owned by his estate: 13

Percentage of people that agree with Air New Zealand that they should put CCTV cameras in their planes: 11.3

Number of countries the US Justice Department has advised since 1981 on the creation of freedom of information policies: 73

Degrees of freedom accorded each eyebrow of an “Emotion Expression” robot under development : 4

Year by which humans will be having sex with robots, according to the head of the European Robotics Research Network: 2011

Percentage by which the average earnings of a major U.S. film with no sex in 2003 exceeded those of one with graphic sex: 120

Number of Viagra users who have reported becoming blind from the drug: 38

Number of tries it took an American blind man to pass a shooting test in 2000, before receiving a gun permit: 2

Number of American states in which one may legally shoot fish with a semi-automatic rifle: 2

Amount of money energy companies will spend in the next 5 years exploring the 8 gas blocks off Southland they recently purchased: 1.2 billion

Volume of new reserves added by major oil companies in 2005, expressed as a percentage of oil pumped that year: 51

Year in which Australian brothels were offering clients discounts based on their petrol bills: 2006

Number of coupons a German magazine offered in 2001 for free sex with prostitutes: 1

Amount a Rhode Island man received in a settlement last year over his faulty penile implant: $520,000

Number of years he has had an erection: 10

SOURCES: 1. The Southland Times 29 July 2007; 1, 2, 3, 4. Sunday Star Times 29 July; 5. James R. Petersen, The Century of Sex, Grove Press (N.Y.C.); 6. New York Times (N.Y.C.); 7. UNAIDS (N.Y.C.); 8. Ray Blanchard, University of Toronto; 9. Ian Munro (London); 10. Ian Munro (London); 11. Stuff.co.nz; 12. U.S. Department of Justice; 13. Waseda University (Tokyo); 14. Henrik I. Christensen (Stockholm); 15. The Christian Film and Television Commission (Camarillo, Calif.); 16. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, Md.); 17. Cass County Sheriff’s Department (Fargo, N.D.); 18. The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department (Waterbury); 19. The Southland Times 12 July 2007; 20. Sanford C. Bernstein Limited (London); 21. Reuters via Yahoo!; 22. Ananova; 23, 24: Jules D’Alessandro, Romano, Spinella, D’Alessandro & Wright LLC (Providence).

E-mail Pecking Orders to editor@Salient.org.nz