For the record, I'm not a professor; I work in the private sector.  I co-own a small, humble high-tech company that develops intellectual property for different types of sensors.  Most of my non-bitcoin work is what you would call "spherical-cow math" to try to understand physical phenomenon in order to make better devices.   Some examples include optimally fusing the signal of a gyroscope with an accelerometer to measure human motion, understanding the propagation of vibrations through metal drill string for acoustic telemetry while oil drilling, to inferring the temperature of the process chamber at an Intel semicon fab by measuring the fluorescence of a special crystal.  

So I suggest that a better attack would be "he's not even a professor...he just models spherical cows."  You should keep the "backwater sub-arctic middle of nowhere bit," however.  It does get cold and lonely up here in my igloo.  

Anyways, enough about me.  Let's focus on making Bitcoin succeed.