I know this looks like a lot of text to read. But I could only think of one way to explain my point, and that's by asking you to read a large block of text. I probably sent you this link because you thought that that one page on Ironic Sans should have convinced me that using light text on a dark background is a Bad Thing. While I agree that white on black gives weird ghosting issues with a block of paragraph text, I find the black on white alternative presented there blinding, and thus just about as readable. So, I'm here to show you that colors do make a difference, and slightly more muted ones tend to turn out better, producing less eye strain and all that jazz. If you'll notice, books aren't printed with a straight black ink on purely white paper - go ahead and grab the paperback you're reading and compare it to your computer screen now. That's mostly an artifact of how we produce things, sure, but not purely. Anyways, to return to the most important subject (me), you might be surprised to know that I use NoSquint to change a number of text-heavy sites (most notably, Wikipedia) to have a nice light grey text color on a dark grey background, because I find it to be far less stressful on my eyes late at night. So please, remember that not everyone is you.