title: Why does Date.parse not return a Date object?
body: <pre><code>today1 = new Date();
  today2 = Date.parse("2008-28-10");
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>To compare the time (millisecond) values of these I have to do the following, because today2 is just a number.</p>
  
  <pre><code>if (today1.getTime() == today2)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Why is this?</p>