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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - The morning after President Obama laid out his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, media critics are expressing concern that the focus on Afghanistan could distract the media from getting to the bottom of the Tiger Woods story.

With the budgets of media companies stretched to the limit, there are worries that most outlets do not have the capacity to cover both a major war and an alleged scandal involving a prominent golfer and slutty nightclub employees.

Davis Logsdon, the director of the Media Studies Institute at the University of Minnesota, says the simultaneity of the Afghanistan and Tiger Woods stories will mean a "gut check" for the 24-hour news channels.

"Most news outlets will be forced to choose between analyzing the President's new troop deployment or airing Tiger's alleged voicemails," he said. "For the good of the Republic, I hope they will go with the voicemails." More here.

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Brilliant critique. The 24 hour drivel channels were probably nervous when the balloon-boy thing died down. What would they talk about now? Tiger gave them a gift. Heaven forbid they actually spend the majority of their air-time on real news.

(Credit: Apple)

File it under the "get this while you can" category. Last week Apple approved a 99-cent application called iRwego that features both the sounds and artwork of the Super Mario series from Nintendo. And yes, it's still up--though probably not for long.

The app, not blessed by Nintendo, plays more than a minute of music from the Super Mario game while using the iPhone/iPod's accelerometer to take into account any physical movement by the user. In turn, it plays back the same jump sound effect found in Nintendo's Mario games. The idea is to run the app, then stick it in your pocket and pretend to be everyone's favorite plumber.

Along with its accelerometer-powered sound effects, the app also acts as a soundboard, playing familiar sounds like the "worp worp worp" of the green warp pipes, jumping on enemies heads, and hitting the familiar orange question mark power-up boxes. There are also two Mario quotes: "Here we go!" and "Oki doki!" which can be played just by tapping the white, on-screen speech bubbles.

In the app's description, developer Jerome Alves says there's an updated version awaiting approval from Apple that adds extra music as well as vibration for sound effects like breaking bricks. That is, if it doesn't end up in the App Store's blacklist first.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNET. But based on recent IP squabbles over games like Stoneloops of Jurassica, expect action to be swift if Nintendo gets involved. If it does, there are a slew of other Mario-specific apps on the App Store, but most are simply game guides. Though others like Ricky, iMarioSounds and iMario could draw Nintendo's ire, since they don similar use of the company's sound and visual assets.

Here's a demo of what it looks like:

(via the Touch Arcade forums)

So you can get this for your iphone, but no Google Voice. Hmm . . .

I totally agree with Tiger on this one. I hope we never find out and that he sorts things out happily with his family. Its none of our business, and the world would be a better place if the gossip industry faded into the obscurity it deserves.

Karen O is making the noises. I think this song's very cute. It reminds me of being little and silly.