Extracting Individual Files from an Archive

Too often, I only need a single file or a couple of files from an archive.
One answer to this is to just extract the entire archive so that I can
get to those particular files.  The more precise answer is to simply
extract only those files that I need and place them where I want them.

Fixing an Overly Eager chmod in Linux

A while ago, someone asked me how to recover from a mistyped recursive
'chmod' they performed.  Similar to the write-up on an "overeager chown",
they mistyped the path and it executed against the root FS (/).  Ideally,
one would have a backup to recover from, however that wasn't an option