December 29, 1993

THERE are those who feel about caviar the way the writer Colette felt about truffles: they'd rather have no caviar at all than have less than too much. Hence the traditional predilection for huge tins of caviar, mounted on a heap of shaved ice, accompanied by chopped egg and minced red onion or by creme fraiche, with mother-of-pearl spoons for shoveling and vodka or Champagne for refreshing. But ghosts of decadent czars, European aristocrats and Diamond Jim Brady haunt such displays. Those who have eaten their fill of caviar know the essential truth of the salted and aged sturgeon egg: no spoonful is ever as superb as the first. In short order, the palate is rendered insensitive to the fragile burst of the egg and, as the salt accumulates in the mouth, numbed to caviar's briny essence.

It may not be one of the world's most pressing problems, but Japanese and American companies seem on the verge of a technological breakthrough: cotton shirts that require little or no ironing. Without so much as a collar touch-up, the shirts are "O.K. to wear even for a formal occasion," said Shizuo Watanabe, an executive at a Japanese company with a popular no-iron process.

The fight over fraud charges in Prudential Securities' sale of limited partnerships, which for years has mainly been confined to skirmishes between small investors and the firm, is on the verge of becoming a battle of corporate titans. American International Group Inc., which provided insurance for Prudential in its largest limited partnerships, is investigating whether to contest payment of any proceeds to the firm for insurance claims arising from settlements of fraud actions brought by partnership investors, people involved in the situation said yesterday. The two companies have been in talks as recently as this week.

Staring at his computer, his thumb drumming on his desk, Mohan Kumar tapped characters onto a screen to produce bits of the outline of the program for a vast global satellite telephone system being built by Motorola to change the face of mobile communications. "India has a lot of talented engineers, but they aren't always doing the most advanced work," Mr. Kumar said. "Here we are on the cutting edge."

A student-sponsored speech by a Nation of Islam minister that attacked whites, homosexuals and Jews in mocking and often cruel ways has ignited a bitter debate at Kean College, a state school struggling to achieve racial diversity and multicultural scholarship. The speech on campus last month has led to deepening tensions between black and Jewish faculty members and an exchange of recriminations between the college president, Dr. Elsa Gomez, and the New Jersey Chancellor for Higher Education, Dr. Edward D. Goldberg.