I have felt the pain of Hibernate. It just sucks. But I think that it is possible to make an ORM like solution work. A great example is NeXT's EOF and now Apple's Core Data. The combo of awesome mapping tools and Objective-C's dynamism make for system that works very well for it's intended purpose. Mind you core data is not a database and likely would not work well for a web service, but I believe that EOF did.
WTF is an Army officer doing intergating an American civilian at the airport? They have no jurisdiction or authority off base. Military activity in a civilian context should sacre the shit out of everyone.
Regardless there are people who choose to remain homeless. When I lived in Finland there were homeless, even though there were plenty of opportunities not to be.
You know there are entire disciplines dedicated to the study of usability and user experience. Zed seems shocked that someone would claim that programmers (who generally have no training or interest usability) aren't good at making usable products. It's about as controversial as saying that construction workers don't make good architects.
Whats more unscientific; genetics are scary and we should never intentionally modify genes for our benefit, or lets investigate what can be done with this new tool? I'd say that investigation and experimentation would be the scientific thing to do.