The current layout is way too distracting. Provide an alternative theme to allow for a much more efficient browsing session. Deprioritise most non content items by making them smaller (eg. voting arrows, vote counts, how many votes, how soon answered etc.) and allow focus on the content.

For more detailed explanation and rationale, see my blog post : http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2008/09/stack-overflow-is-spirit-underflow-a-plea-to-not-deprioritise-content-and-spirit/