Huh? You can bend or stretch a circle into a parabola?
In a sense, yes. A parabola is simply an ellipse with one of the foci at infinity.
In a sense, yes. A parabola is simply an ellipse with one of the foci at infinity.
the author of this article should stick to what she knows...english literature, not algebra.
In the affine real plane, yes. In the projective real plane, all (non-degenerate) conics have the same fundamental group.
On a projective plane a parabola contains a single point at infinity, connected (both figuratively and topologically) to the two open ends. A hyperbola contains two distinct points at infinity each connected to one end of each of the two usual components.