One more thing to add. I think that the desire to see the default color before drawing with it mostly stems from the traditional, pre-computer, workflow of an artist: you pick a color and then you draw with it, not vice versa. As it is now, Inkscape does not yield to this metaphor particularly well: when you launch it, there's no color to pick anywhere. So it's understandable that you may be subconsciously reluctant to start drawing, without feeling a brush dripping with fresh paint in your hand.
But remember that this is going to change soon. We will have a color palette right in the main interface, above the statusbar. And as I already explained, color swatches work exactly as you expect: pick a color, start drawing. (When we have a palette of stored styles, it will work that way too.) That will be an artist's dream.
Another thing to consider is the subtle difference between color _selection_ tools and color _adjustment_ tools. The Fill&stroke dialog, with its color sliders, is more suitable for slight adjustment of colors. With it, you start with some color and you make changes to it, watching the result _on canvas_ immediately - that is, applied to the selected object where the new color is much easier to evaluate than in a tiny swatch. A color/style palette, on the other hand, is much better for initial selection of the base color, by choosing it from a well-organized logical palette, but is not suitable for adjusting colors at all. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense that with a palette, you can pre-select color with which to draw, whereas in fill&stroke and in selected style indicator you can only adjust the colors of selection. It's simply in the nature of these tools.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org