So I admit, I’m behind the curve; I just noticed that
Nathaniel’s RubyConf’05 presentation made the sidebar of
You know, taken out of context, people might interpret that subject
line in an unflattering way. 
Context
A. Feldmann and W. Whitt. Fitting mixtures of exponentials to longÂtail
distributions to analyze network performance models. Performance
Evaluation,
31:245–279, 1998.
Follows discovery that stock market behavior is “longtailed” not normal.