It’s fun to enjoy Sidney Harris’s cartoons at their most basic level. But Harris’s cartoons typically include several levels of humor that are particularly relished by “insiders.” Regarding the chemicals mentioned in this cartoon, Harris “think[s] these actually are from canned soup. Maybe more than one. Generally I make up names that I don’t even know exist. Once I had an equation in a cartoon for the New Yorker, and they wanted me to assure them that it was gibberish. If it wasn’t, they said they’d get a lot of angry and critical mail.” — Jeffrey I. Seeman, University of Richmond
