You have asked a question, and then actually presented a bunch of proposals based on your biases and non-understandings of both the aims and the audience. Many, many proposals have been made for "improving" the interface. People have presented many alternatives. None have stuck, all have been critiqued. I you did some research you would see their fate.

Are you so sure you really do know better?

  > "I wake up every morning to HN and my eyes hurt."

Then write your own style sheets and GreaseMonkey script (or equivalent) to fix your rendered. When you're convinced you've got it right and it's significantly better, then offer it.

And best of all, do some research on previous answers to this question and present a "proposal" that actually addressed the previous discussions.