I opened a bug here:

http://code.google.com/p/earth-issue.../detail?id=788

And even posted a video of this problem happening to me here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVOIDX8oTrY

But no one has replied to the bug, so I thought I'd try here. This is the description I gave on the earth-issues tracker:

The graphics in Google Earth are very messed up. Random tiles on the Earth are not what they
should be. Sometimes they're replaced with just a black box; sometimes they're replaced with
tiles from another part of the map, possibly at a different zoom level; sometimes they're
replaced with blurry text; and sometimes they're replaced with what looks to be random
images. The affect is similar to the garbage you see when catting a binary file to a text
terminal, only with map tiles.
And my specs:

Google Earth: 5.1.3509.4636 (beta)
Build Date: Sep 17, 2009
Build Time: 3:18:34 pm
Renderer: OpenGL
Operating System: Linux (2.6.31.0)
Video Driver: DRI R300 Project
Max Texture: Size 2048x2048
Server: kh.google.com