Passing a column set to an SQLalchemy query

In implementing the List method of the EntityAccessManager provided by the Contacts bundle in OpenGroupware Coils it seemed like it would be very efficient to allow the consumer to request what set of attributes it needed; for instance, if a WebDAV client's PROPFIND request didn't ask for a given property, why request the corresponding attribute in the query? Especially since the result set for PROPFIND queries are frequently very large [on the order of 20,000 records or so]. But how to pass a set of attributes as a parameter?

    def List(ctx, attributes):
      ...
      db = query(attributes).filter(....)
      return db.all 

does not work; where attributes is a list, or a set of more than one attribute. Some fiddling around and I discover that the following works:

    def List(ctx, *attributes):
      ...
      db = query(*attributes).filter(...)
      return db.all()

    ...
    ctx = AssumedContext(10100)
    a = BundleManager.get_access_manager('Contact', ctx)
    a.List(ctx, (Contact.object_id, Contact.version))

That single asterisk is the trick.