One of the 27 departments in the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) works tirelessly to “reduce the burden of human illness … by understanding how the environment influences the development and progression of human disease.” Scientists at NIEHS are studying a whole host of problems, from the burden of pollution on the poor to lead poisoning to chemicals that could trigger Alzheimer’s. Given all this, why has someone at NIEHS amassed an almost-comically large collection of midis to post on its website?

For the children, apparently. As part of the Kid’s Section of its website, NIEHS claims that music is an important part of our “environment” before sheepishly admitting NIEHS doesn’t actually research the effects of music. At least a lot of the songs contain links to other sites, sometimes with dubious connections: ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ sends you to the USGS butterfly zone.

Here are some examples of your tax dollars at work:

“Our House” by Crosby, Stills, & Nash

“MIB” (Theme to the film ‘Men in Black’) by Will Smith

“Fly Away” by Lenny Kravitz

Link to NIEHS Sing Along Songs

Popularity: 3% [?]

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See Also: The Visible Human Project,Ordering Chinese Food in Chinese: 101,Interactive…Wallpaper?,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under Social Change, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.