I went to http://www.ros.org/wiki/rviz but I was unable to quickly find
out where to log this bug report.

The program 'rviz' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'GLXBadDrawable'.
  (Details: serial 276 error_code 130 request_code 128 minor_code 5)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error()
function.)

Somehow removing ~/.rviz fixed the problem, next time I'll try to backup
~/.rviz before deleting it.

I also think I managed to break rviz by deinstalling my nvidia graphics
driver and reinstalling the opensource driver. These problems may or may
not be related.