This is a frustrating issue, because it's either Google Earth messing up because of something in your placemarks file, try moving it somewhere outside of ~/.googleearth and see if it starts up.

Or the more likely cause, is simply the ATI driver is causing some fault in the Google Earth graphics code. Rolling back the ATI driver may fix that issue (but certainly isn't the solution)
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Let the mind beware, that though the project be buggy, the circumstances of software testing are pretty damn glorious.