I don't use Ruby, I do use MVC (C# in my case). I honestly don't agree with your interpretation of 'MVC'.
And again, for me, a model should be a representation of an object/data. If it is tied to an ORM (Active Record or Entity Framework) it may come with DB access, but I still don't think models should contain application specific logic. That's what the 'Business' layer should be for. If an Invoice model knows about tax codes from 130 different countries, again I think it knows way too much about the application.
The term Model on it's own doesn't mean much, and is very overloaded with meaning. You can see it as the data objects (stuff like Person(id, firstName, lastName) for example), but that's one definition of it.
Not sure which pattern you're thinking of, but it's not MVC.