Calendars are arbitrary constructs humans use to organize time for convenience. Ancient Rome's calendar was managed by the Pontifex Maximus, a religious leader who could also be a politician. Julius Caesar exploited this dual role for political advantage, manipulating festivals to disrupt his opposition. His efforts resulted in the Julian calendar, which served as the primary calendar for about 1500 years. Pope Gregory later refined the calendar, fixing leap year calculations and realigning it with the seasons, which required skipping thirteen days. The text emphasizes that dates have historically lacked inherent logic. It then introduces a problematic Java code snippet involving GregorianCalendar and XMLGregorianCalendar. This code attempts to convert a GregorianCalendar to an XMLGregorianCalendar and then back again, comparing the two. Despite the apparent logic suggesting a true comparison, the conversion process to XMLGregorianCalendar is lossy. Consequently, the function in the code snippet always returns false. The author questions the purpose and usefulness of such a check, highlighting human fallibility in coding. The historical context serves to illustrate that temporal systems have always been subject to change and inconvenience.