Looking at the design my eyes wander, rather than being directed -- element are too stylistically similar. It doesn't help that the images are roughly the same size which prevents them from denoting relative importance. The constant use of blue is overwhelming as well.
I never thought i'd say this, but the new mashable makes TC's design look inspired. At least on TC its very easy to ignore the right column.
The single post page looks much better/more thought out than the front page. The front page lacks flow; there's no differentiation between the sidebar and the content and I'm not quite sure where to look first, next, etc.
The front page design makes me think that they're going for some whitespace, but that you really can't click on the page without clicking on something. A blurring between ads and content that makes it more likely to accidentally click an ad, and that every click on a page should result in a pageload of some sort, even if the user was intending to click a blank area.
It's like 'horror vacui'[1] applied to web development.
I never thought i'd say this, but the new mashable makes TC's design look inspired. At least on TC its very easy to ignore the right column.