I honestly don't remember what I was attempting to accomplish with this, but it was important enough at the time to be my second Gist

interesting_tables.rake

    task :write => :environment do 

      dir = RAILS_ROOT + '/db/backup'
      FileUtils.mkdir_p(dir)
      FileUtils.chdir(dir)
    
      interesting_tables.each do |tbl|
        sql ||= ActiveRecord::Base.connection()
        if (records = sql.execute("SELECT * FROM " + tbl) rescue false)
          puts "Writing #{tbl}..."
          collection = Array.new; records.each_hash(){|rec| collection.push rec }
          File.open("#{tbl}.yml", 'w+') { |f| YAML.dump collection, f }
        else
          puts "Skipping #{tbl}..."
        end
      end
    end