I didn't understand your comment until I enabled Javascript for the occasion and found that they use photos. And corny ones, too; I'm looking at "Hot air ballons over Cappadocia" (I still don't get the "panther thingy"; maybe because I'm in Germany). Makes no sense at all to me - why would they want to do that?

Ah. In the UK we get a crappy clipart snow leopard. Looks terrible.

I'm actually thinking there's room there to make UI improvements that would benefit the user.

For example, with the live id and being logged in, I think it would be neat if these background images eventually ended up being something relevant to me rather than something generic.

Right now, there is definitely room for improvement, but I wouldn't say it's downright bad.