When a method is called with no regular arguments and * args, defer
the first arg is subclass check until after the * args have been
expanded.
N.B. The CALL_FUNCTION implementation is getting really hairy; should
review it to see if it can be simplified.
If a non-tuple sequence is passed as the *arg, convert it to a tuple
before checking its length.
If named keyword arguments are used in combination with **kwargs, make
a copy of kwargs before inserting the new keys.
Jeremy Hylton
Fred Drake
Vladimir Marangozov
Guido van Rossum