As a extension: from a DB perspective, if a chuck of info is someting that you would logically normalize into its own table, does that suggest that it should be its own object?

That kind of data-centric design is surely useful, but I think one has to be careful not to put the cart before the horse. If you are building an object-oriented system, IMHO you should put more emphasis on modeling the problem you are trying to solve, and less on worrying about how the database is going to feel about your solution.