This week Mark Hartnett, of the Palm Beach Post, alerts us to a map he and his paper recently published, a map of the hometowns of the U.S. troops killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afganistan.  They did a similar map a year ago, but one that reflected the gross numbers of the dead from each city.  This year they put those numbers in context by displaying the rate of deaths per 100,000 population.  It makes a difference and raises new questions.  Note that the height of the columns reflects, as Mark Hartnett points out in his comment below, the number of deaths while the color indicates deaths-per-100,000 residents ages 18-64.