I'll give you the same result again but with additional clock(), 
just for a heart's pleasure:

clock(): 0.100958 , fstat(): posix.stat_result(st_mode=33184, st_ino=10075508, st_dev=234881025, st_nlink=1, st_uid=502, st_gid=20, st_size=4294967300, st_atime=1298719201, st_mtime=1298719305, st_ctime=1298719305)
> f.close()
> print('clock():', time.clock(), ', stat():', os.stat(name))
clock(): 3.75792 , stat(): posix.stat_result(st_mode=33184, st_ino=10075508, st_dev=234881025, st_nlink=1, st_uid=502, st_gid=20, st_size=4294967300, st_atime=1298719201, st_mtime=1298719305, st_ctime=1298719305)

Please don't assume i go for Mac OS X ... 
In the end you *always* need to implement an expensive state 
machine to get around long-known bugs, mis-implementations or 
other poops there.