It’s impossible for anyone to ever really say for sure, but a few people over at Target Marketing are giving it a shot.

… for two minutes? I bet you can — but I bet you get pretty antsy, too. Visit this Web site and give it a try. It’s a simple but clear example of how even brief relaxation has become a lost art.

(Hat tip to Mark Evanier for the heads up on this one.)

In the wake of this story on FT.com about Amazon stepping up home delivery of groceries, I was a little surprised to see that Peapod is evidently still alive and kicking.

Rather than Amazon, though, I would think people would be more likely to order from their local supermarkets — which are missing out on a good bet if they’re not aggressively investigating this whole online-ordering-and-home-delivery thing.

Sherry Turkle has been one of the most incisive thinkers about how people interact with technology. Her 1995 book, “Life On the Screen: Identity In the Age of the Internet,” is one of the best books out there about the sociology of the Internet.

Now comes “Alone Together,” which is sitting in my Amazon shopping cart waiting for checkout, and which is getting Turkle a lot of press. Here’s a Guardian.co.uk article about the book, and here’s Turkle on The Colbert Report.

Anyone who’s ever been irritated by or participated in sitting at a dinner table where everyone at the table is busy texting on their phones — and isn’t that pretty much all of us? — should probably read this book.

Taschen is a remarkable publishing house that produces a wide range of generally excellent and impressive books. Their $200 DC Comics book, for example, is a thing of beauty that’s an absolute must-own for any comics fan.

Anyway, their Web site allows you to look inside some of their books in significant depth. For example, through this link you can leaf through Guidelines for Online Success. There are sections on interface and design, technology and programming, marketing and communication — all sorts of good stuff.

Flipping through the pages, I found lots of interesting things. Like on page 32, where they say in their list of Do’s and Don’ts: “Do provide a skip intro button.” Well, in my mind that begs a bigger question: If you need to have a skip intro button, do you really need to have an intro at all? (I’d love to see actual stats from a number of representative sites as to what percentage of visitors hit the skip intro button.)

What really struck me, though, was the final paragraph of the intro to the marketing section:

Two words: Be confident! That’s right, be confident about your work. If you believe in your work — that will make them (the enemy, the client … a necessary evil) believe in you. If you show an ounce of doubt about your work, then they will leverage that doubt into a whole Pandora’s Box of problems by jumping in with both feet and telling you how to design the site. “I always liked the colour red; can you make the site red? And make the text bounce like it’s dancing?” No! You see, every client wants to be a designer but nature never blesses one person with both artistic skills and the gift of spewing forth utter BS and lies. Make sure they don’t cross the line … be strong! For you are the giant key to your own success.

Wow.

Martin Hughes and Jordan Stone of WEFAIL wrote that, and I suppose if you want to be a complete and utter schmuck of a design snob and be at war with clients constantly while you try to pick their pockets so you can do whatever it is you want to do anyway that has less to to with the client’s business and more to do with your own shallow need to rack up another award … well, I suppose that’s the way to go. For my $.02, though, I’d rather work with a designer who has confidence that he or she is working in service of the business goals of the client.

Takeaway for marketers: Your client should be a partner not an enemy. If you’re looking at your clients as enemies, you need to go find another line of work.