WHEN THOR HEYERDAHL died in April, the mass media fell oddly mute. Some readers told me that they learned of the great Norwegian explorer’s death only a week later, by reading my eulogy on the Internet. Such apathy seems hard to fathom. Every schoolboy once read Kon-Tiki and dreamed of conquering the waves as Heyerdahl had done. Perhaps, imbued with the modern philosophy of "safety first," today’s journalists no longer wish to encourage such dreams. Media apathy has likewise greeted Dominique Goerlitz – Heyerdahl’s apprentice and heir apparent. On July 20, this 35-year-old German schoolteacher landed in Alexandria, Egypt, after...