Today, we discussed SQL and contracts.  Which was interesting.

To give you a brief recap of the ethics bit of today, we're spending a few weeks thinking about contract theories, because many of you have been talking about ideas germane to contract theories in previous weeks, and if you like contracts, I think it's important to offer you the tools to think about contracts a little more deeply.

So we're starting at the beginning.  The 16th-19th century thinkers that shaped our 21st century American conceptions of contracts (especially social contracts) were deeply influenced by the political and moral philosophy of the Hebrew Bible (aka the Old Testament).  Today, I handed out this handout on ideas of contracts/covenants in the Hebrew Bible, and talked about some of the ways the different covenants--Noah, Abraham, Moses--were structured.  We identified together some of the key elements or qualities of the different covenants. 

Your mission: write a contract modeled on one of the covenants, using the qualities we identified in class as your guide.  Your contract can be about anything--marriage, exchange of goods and services, a class, the White Hat oath, etc.  Keep it clean and appropriate--and what that means is that you should avoid obscenity, but frank and appropriate discussion of adult topics isn't off limits (see, for instance, our brief reference to sex in talking about marriage contracts today).  Post this in an original post to this blog  no later than Monday at 9PM.  Please post on time!  Enjoy!