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I found the color scheme easy to read.

Using a Dell monitor attached to a mac via DVI though, and calibrated to the best of my ability using the OSX calibration tool.

Agreed. It's definitely not high enough contrast for such a thin font.

Bizarrely: I, too, had to strain to read the page; which I attributed, however, to the weight of the font: so thin that it won't render without artifacts.

You may need to enable ClearType.

If on Windows XP. Display Properties > Appearance > Effects

I'm on Mac OSX; is there an equivalent?

For Snow Leopard: Open System Preferences, go to Appearance, and uncheck "Use LCD font smoothing when available"

What browser are you using? It looks great to me here in Chrome and Safari.

Chrome on Mac.