It's a crowded world, after all....

Well, according to the number crunchers, at 6:17 pm (here) today the planet groaned under the weight of 6.5 BILLION people.

Yowza.

At 7:16 p.m. ET on Saturday, the population here on this good Earth hit 6.5 billion people, according to projections.

Along with this forecast, an analysis by the International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau points to another factoid, Robert Bernstein of the Bureau's Public Information Center advised LiveScience. Mark this on your calendar: Some six years from now, on Oct. 18, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. ET, the Earth will be home to 7 billion folks.

What's really scary is that we didn't reach our first billion until around 1850. Read the whole article-- it's very interesting.

Furthermore, today the planet groaned a little bit more under MY weight, since I have all but abandoned dieting in the last month-- stress, y'know. So I better get on that.