I guess my aesthetic sense is different from the author's in a way which places greater weight on functionality, because there is nothing ugly about this web site in my eyes. It has lots of text, there is nothing in the way of the text, and the content is generally interesting: ahhhh, yes! It's lovely. Give me more!

I strip away virtually all the designery fluff from the web via Reader View, anyway; if a page doesn't work in Reader View, I probably won't bother with it.