Striped this that and the other

It seems whenever something taken for granted, like how significant stripes are, is brought to your attention, you can't stop realizing it in actuality. I am seeing stripes everywhere and finding my self questioning what there purpose is and why they are where they are, if their direction matters, or if their size and regularity matter. Diagonal verses horizontal and vertical, these all have meaning and can greatly influence how we see something. For instance if the stripes on on a cross walk were diagonal, or went length-ways instead of the way they are, that would completely change the way we looked at a cross walk. Also, I went to a CAL basket ball game last weekend and noticed that the referee was wearing vertical black and white evenly spaced stripes. This got me thinking about why refs wear stripes and other brightly colored shirts, well obviously because they want to stand out, but could there also be a slight comparison to the penal system and this idea that the ref is someone to be treated with feared respect, for if they dressed like authoritarian figures they would be in dark muted colored uniforms, or is their outfit a new style of authoritarianism? What do you think?