On Food, and then again....
Harold McGee has a blog, and explains why white pepper sometimes develops nasty flavors. Short version: they ferment away the fruit and keep the seed, and when you ferment barrels of fruit outdoors in the tropics, sometimes things get out of hand.
Eric Ripert, simultaneously, blogs about why he likes white pepper. Meanwhile, Ruhlman's reminding us that chilli peppers are spelled with a double 'l' (a borrowing from Nahuatl.