It's the amateurish touches that grate
... for instance, the fact that every comment icon has to be enclosed in a little teensy weensy grey border.
Which means each icon is smaller, less legible etc because it has to have a border... AND a line of white space inside so you can see the border! Which detracts from the icon itself, especially if the icon is round, whereupon the border just GRATES.
Are you scared that the icons will be eaten by marauding text? Or that freed, they will go on the rampage and crawl up to the masthead, batting at passing planes?
And as previously remarked upon by others, why are you taking crapulous bit-map art from the nineties and then ANTI-ALIASING it? You should be BURNING this trash.
If you notice design, there is probably something wrong with it. So do us all a favour, go to www.kare.com, have a good look round at the GOOD stuff and then (metaphorically speaking) grow a pair and do something better. An icon is not a picture, it's a symbol, remember?
" The main problem with Microsoft? They have... no taste" (steve jobs in interview)
Steve Jobs, because he got Susan Kare to do the good stuff