I have been doing some gradient/stopping work with inkscape colors.

I find that the default pallatte colors at the bottom of the screen don't go out as expected.

When using the calligraphy tool, to draw in bright blue, I get a light purple color.

Where do I go to resume all such color settings to default?

Are you saying you set calligraphy tool to paint in blue, but the result was purple? Check your preferences, are you using last used style to draw? Maybe that's why you're not getting the results you expect.

When you select an object and click on the bright blue chip in the palette do you still get purple?

Yes, indeed, I have it set to use previous color.

However, 0.46 doesn't seem to let me select a radio button off of this.

All the colors are coming through too thin:

repeated use of the paint bucket, for example, seem to
put more of the desired color in, until the desired hue is reached.

How Do I get the Fill and Stroke colors, when used with the drawing tools,
to behave themselves, ie off the palatte at the bottom of the screen?

You have set the opacity to be less than 100, your objects are partly transparent, so that style is also applied to the new objects that inherit last used style. Set the opacity to 100 before drawing your new object or filling with the bucket and you'll get what you need

You can check which style is going to be used on the new object by looking at top right corner.

You can choose to always use the same style when drawing with a particular tool as an alternative to using the last style, but personally I think using the last style is more flexible because then you can click on color chips before drawing an object to set the style to be used on the object you draw next.