Don't think of them as VICE principles. This little audiobook and its follow-up volume, cleverly subtitled Volume 2, are about VICE: Values. Integrity. Character. Ethics.

The audiobooks are called The VICE Quad because quadrilaterals have distinct properties, whether they form a square or a rectangle or a parallelogram or a rhombus or a trapezoid. Deviate in the number of edges or vertices or angles and you cross the line, you no longer have a quadrilateral.

It's the same with VICE. Values, integrity, character, and ethics have distinct properties. Like quadrilaterals, there is movement within the properties of VICE, but there are rules you can't break, lines that you can't cross and remain true.

These bits of news and short stories and anecdotes and metaphors and parables and allegories simply remind us that the lines exist. There's nothing preachy here, merely the opportunity to consider your edges. I don't always know where to draw my own lines, so I can't know where you should draw yours. But I know this: It is a mistake to use the vagaries of right and wrong as an excuse for bad behavior and poor choices.

Rather than following the crowd by seeing how close you can get to a line, why not embrace your values more fully, live with greater integrity, develop a superior character, and always act with unswerving ethics? After all, it is your rhombus on the line.