Let me put it this way: currently, reducing the time intervals between blocks harms both security of the system and mining fairness (having the profits depends only on the hash-power and not on network connectivity). The GHOST proposal enables reducing the average interval without harming security while unfortunately harming mining fairness. My proposal enables to do so also without harming much mining fairness.

So I agree with you that making this interval about a second might be just too much despite GHOST (and my improvements), yet I don’t quite see why are you thinking 10 minutes is the right interval… we already have functioning alt-coins that works pretty well with 2.5 minutes and without GHOST!

As for the academia, I think it is quite diverse: sometimes (and I believe this paper is such an example) the border between the "real world" and academy is really unclear, while sometimes the theory is so different that the practice and might only be relevant long time into the future.